Cheap data driving profound changes

The collapse in data prices hurts the telecom industry, but is transformative for the economy, adding 5% to GDP

As a proportion of per capita income, data on Indian mobile networks has gone from being the most expensive globally two years ago to being the cheapest, having fallen 95 per cent. Such steep price declines affect habits and behaviour. We at Credit Suisse embarked on a study to understand the economic implications of this change.

Understandably, during this period there has been a dramatic surge in data consumption, with per capita monthly usage rising eight-fold to nearly six and a half gigabytes. Indian mobile networks now claim that they carry more data than several global telecommunication companies combined. While some