A TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) report on Wednesday said that the prices of mobile data have fallen drastically by about 95 percent to Rs 11.78 per gigabyte (GB) while the cumulative revenue of telecom operators has risen by around 2.5 times to Rs 54,671 crore in the last five years.

Further, data usage in the country has increased by 56 folds to 46,404 million GB in 2018 from 828 million GB in 2014. The average data consumption in India has seen a significant jump to 7.6 GB per subscriber in 2018 from 0.27 GB per subscriber in 2014, the report said.

States of West Bengal, UP (West) and Assam saw a record growth of over 100 percent in the average wireless data usage per subscriber per year in 2018 while other service areas grew by over 50 percent during the same period.

"Total volume of wireless data usage increased from 20,092 million GB in the year 2017 to 46,404 million GB in the year 2018 with yearly growth rate of 131 percent. Total volume of wireless data usage in the year 2014 was only 828 million GB," the report said.

It also showed that of the total volume of wireless data usage in 2018, 4G technology contributed a major part, that is, 86.85 percent with volume of 40,304 million GB while share of 2G, 3G and CDMA data usage was 0.95 percent, 12.18 percent and 0.01 percent, respectively.

The average revenue per person rose to Rs 90.02 in 2018 from Rs 71.25 in 2014.

"Total revenue from wireless data usage increased from Rs 38,882 crore in the year 2017 to Rs 54,671 crore in the year 2018 with yearly growth rate of 40.61 percent. The total revenue from wireless data usages was Rs 22,265 crore in the year 2014," the report said.

In 2014 and 2015, the average cost to subscriber for wireless data was Rs 269 per GB and Rs 226 per GB.

"On introduction of 4G technology in India, average cost to subscriber for wireless data usage sharply declined to Rs 75.57 per GB during the year 2016. Further, average cost to subscriber for wireless data declined from Rs 19.35 per GB in the year 2017 to Rs 11.78 per GB in the year 2018," the report said.

With inputs from PTI