China has become home to the World’s highest number of Internet video consumers, according to the latest ‘Virtual Network Index’ report by the biggest networking firm, CISCO.
According to it 284 million Chinese, around a quarter of its population, watch video on the Internet while only 9.6 million Indians — less than 1% of India’s population — do so.
In other words, India’s number of Internet video users is only 3.3% that of China — a country that was behind India in development fifty years ago.
More worryingly for the Indians, in four years, China will have 502 million (50.2 crore) Internet video users while India’s total will reach only 71 million.
Video usage on the Internet is seen as an indicator of the quality (speed) of the network, as only high quality and cheap Internet connectivity leads to the growth of video consumption through the Internet.
The numbers also seem to suggest that bandwidth is cheaper in China than in India. Against around 120 million broadband connections, the country has 284 million video users while India, with 12 million broadband connections, has only 9.6 million video consumers.
The annual survey also found that global mobile data traffic was 1 percent of total IP [Internet Protocol or Data] traffic in 2010, and will be 8 percent of total IP traffic in 2015.