Ericsson is telling India’s telecom industry not to expect a slowdown. The Swedish network equipment maker says artificial intelligence applications are about to push mobile data traffic into a new phase, and it is pointing to India’s 5G subscriber base, now estimated at roughly 550 million users as of September 2026, as the clearest evidence that the growth curve is still climbing. The claim, reported by Retail News Asia, Rediff MoneyWiz and ET Now, lands as India’s government and telecom operators debate how much more capacity the country’s networks will need over the next five years.
The headline number came from figures the Indian government presented at the India Mobile Congress (IMC), the country’s largest annual telecom industry event. According to those figures, 5G services now reach 99.9% of India’s districts, just four years after the country switched on commercial 5G in October 2022. That rollout speed, compressed into less than half a decade, is central to the argument Ericsson executives are now making in public: India’s network story has not plateaued, and AI is the reason why.
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Ericsson’s India Numbers: From 430 Million to a Billion-Plus
Separately from the government’s IMC figures, Ericsson’s own research puts India’s 5G subscription base at 430 million at the end of 2025, equal to 35% of the country’s total mobile subscriptions at that point. The company’s forecast models now show more than 1.1 billion 5G subscriptions in India by the end of 2031, which would put penetration at 81% of all mobile connections in the country. That is a different dataset from the 550 million figure cited at IMC and gathered closer to real time, but the two numbers point in the same direction: India’s 5G base has grown fast, and Ericsson expects it to keep growing faster than most markets globally.
India’s own policy target is to reach 1 billion 5G subscribers by 2030, a goal set against the backdrop of a market that already has the second-largest number of internet users in the world. If Ericsson’s 1.1 billion-by-2031 forecast holds, India would clear its own government target roughly on schedule, with AI-driven data consumption cited as one of the forces keeping the subscriber curve from flattening out early.
Nitin Bansal: “We Do Not Believe That Growth Has Plateaued”
The most direct pushback against any plateau narrative came from Nitin Bansal, Ericsson’s Managing Director for India and Head of Networks for South East Asia, Oceania and India. In comments reported by Light Reading, Bansal said: “We do not believe that growth has plateaued. Growth will continue as AI applications introduce new network requirements, including higher uplink speeds and lower latency for applications such as augmented and virtual reality and the management of critical infrastructure.”
That framing matters because it shifts the growth conversation away from subscriber counts alone and toward network behavior. A market can look saturated in terms of new SIM activations while still seeing rising demand on the infrastructure itself, because each connection is doing more work. Bansal also pointed to a concrete data point behind that claim: “We are already seeing monthly data usage of around 36-37 GB per user, a level we would not have anticipated a few years ago.” That figure comes from Ericsson’s June 2026 Mobility Report and represents one of the highest average mobile data consumption rates of any large market in the world.
Bansal’s broader point, as reported by Light Reading, was that network expectations will continue to rise and data consumption will grow further as AI-enabled services become part of everyday mobile use. That is a notably different posture than operators in some mature markets, where 5G rollout has already slowed because most high-value subscribers have already migrated off 4G.
Why AI Traffic Changes the Uplink Equation
For most of the smartphone era, mobile networks were built and tuned around downlink traffic: streaming video, downloading apps, loading web pages. Uplink, the data a device sends back to the network, was comparatively light, mostly text messages, photo uploads and small bursts of app data. Ericsson’s scenario modeling now suggests that assumption is breaking down. The company’s analysis indicates that additional AI traffic could make uplink traffic at least three times higher in 2031 than it was in 2025, a shift large enough to change how operators plan spectrum and base station capacity.
The reason is straightforward once you look at how people are starting to use AI tools on mobile devices. A text-based chatbot query sends a small amount of data. A live voice conversation with an AI assistant, or a video call where an AI model is interpreting what the camera sees in real time, sends a continuous and much larger stream of data upward from the device to the network. Erik Ekudden, Ericsson’s Chief Technology Officer, made this point directly in comments reported by the Economic Times: “If you think about talking to an AI service, once it becomes voice or video, it really changes not just the amount of traffic but the need for a resilient, always-on connection.”
That is also why Bansal’s comments specifically called out augmented and virtual reality, along with the management of critical infrastructure, as use cases that need both higher uplink speeds and lower latency simultaneously. Those two requirements together are harder to engineer for than high downlink speed alone, which is part of why Ericsson is framing this as a network architecture story rather than a simple traffic growth story.
India’s 5G Timeline: How the Country Got Here
India’s 5G rollout is young by global standards but unusually fast in execution. Commercial 5G services launched in October 2022, more than two years after several developed markets had already deployed the technology. From that starting point, India reached 99.9% district-level 5G availability by the time the IMC figures were compiled in September 2026, according to the government’s own presentation. That is a four-year run from a standing start to near-total district coverage, a pace that outstrips the rollout timelines seen in most large markets, including the United States and much of Western Europe.
Part of that speed is explained by India’s mobile data habits, which were already unusual before 5G arrived. The country has long ranked among the highest consumers of mobile data per connection globally, a trend driven by affordable data plans from carriers such as Reliance Jio, whose aggressive pricing (including sub-₹125 recharge plans still on offer as of October 2026) helped normalize high-volume data consumption years before 5G network capacity caught up with demand. That pricing environment, covered in detail in Tech Insider’s look at Jio’s ₹123 recharge plan, is one reason Ericsson’s India data usage figures run so far ahead of the global average.
India’s 5G Subscriber Growth: The Numbers
| Milestone | Subscriber Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| October 2022 | Commercial 5G launch in India | Government of India |
| End of 2025 | 430 million 5G subscriptions (35% of mobile subscriptions) | Ericsson |
| September 2026 | Approximately 550 million 5G users; 99.9% of districts covered | Government of India, presented at India Mobile Congress |
| 2030 (target) | 1 billion 5G subscribers | Government of India policy target |
| End of 2031 (forecast) | More than 1.1 billion 5G subscriptions (81% penetration) | Ericsson forecast |
The gap between the 430 million figure Ericsson reported for end-2025 and the roughly 550 million figure presented at IMC less than a year later illustrates how quickly India’s 5G base has been expanding through 2026. Even allowing for the fact that the two figures come from different sources measured at different points, the trajectory is consistent with Ericsson’s own multi-year forecast of sustained double-digit percentage growth through 2031.
Erik Ekudden: India “At the Forefront” of Global 5G
Ericsson’s CTO framed India’s position in global terms rather than purely domestic ones. Erik Ekudden, commenting on the trajectory of India’s mobile data consumption, said: “Moving from 35-36 GB per month to almost double that in less than five years shows that India will remain at the forefront.” That comment, reported by the Economic Times, places India’s data growth curve ahead of most other large mobile markets, where average monthly consumption per user is typically a fraction of India’s current level.
Ekudden’s “forefront” framing is notable because it reverses a narrative that held for most of the 2G, 3G and 4G eras, when India trailed developed markets on both network rollout speed and average data consumption. The 5G era, by Ericsson’s own account, has flipped that relationship. India is no longer catching up; it is one of the markets setting the pace for how operators elsewhere think about data-hungry use cases, especially as AI assistants and generative tools move from desktop and web interfaces onto mobile networks.
India’s Monthly Data Usage Curve
| Period | Average Monthly Data Usage Per User | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Late 2024 | Approximately 32 GB, described as the highest average among major markets globally | Ericsson (Umang Jindal, Head of Network Solutions, Software and Performance, SEA, Oceania and India) |
| Mid-2026 | Approximately 36-37 GB | Ericsson June 2026 Mobility Report (Nitin Bansal) |
| Early 2030s (projected) | Roughly double the mid-2026 level, consistent with Ericsson’s earlier 66 GB-by-2030 projection and a cited CAGR of 13% | Ericsson projection; Erik Ekudden commentary |
The projection in the table above should be read as a trend estimate rather than a fixed guarantee. Ericsson’s own public statements frame it as a scenario built from current growth rates and the expected effect of AI-driven applications, not as a locked forecast. Even so, the direction is consistent across every figure Ericsson has published: usage per connection in India keeps climbing, and the company’s current messaging ties that climb increasingly to AI rather than to video streaming alone, which was the dominant growth driver during the earlier years of 4G and early 5G adoption.
What AI Traffic Actually Looks Like on a Mobile Network
It helps to separate the AI traffic story into the categories Ericsson’s executives have actually named, rather than treating “AI traffic” as one undifferentiated blob of data. Based on the comments from Bansal and Ekudden, the relevant categories are text-based AI queries, which are lightweight and resemble existing messaging traffic; voice-based AI conversations, which require a continuous uplink stream and low latency to feel natural; video-based AI interaction, where a camera feed is sent to a model in close to real time; and augmented or virtual reality applications layered on top of AI processing, which need both high uplink throughput and very low latency at the same time.
Each of those categories imposes a different load profile on the network, which is part of why operators cannot simply add downlink capacity and call the problem solved. A base station that is well tuned for streaming video to thousands of simultaneous users is not automatically well tuned for thousands of users each sending continuous voice or video streams upward. That distinction is also why Ericsson specifically called out “the management of critical infrastructure” as a use case alongside AR and VR. Latency-sensitive industrial and infrastructure applications, which increasingly rely on AI-based monitoring and control, add a reliability requirement on top of the raw throughput requirement.
The Competitive Backdrop: Jio, Airtel and India’s Network Buildout
Ericsson’s commentary does not exist in a vacuum. India’s telecom market is dominated by a small number of operators, led by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, both of which have spent the past several years racing to build out 5G coverage ahead of each other. Jio in particular built its growth strategy around aggressive data pricing designed to pull users onto higher-capacity networks quickly, a strategy that is now arguably paying off in the form of the AI-driven uplink growth Ericsson is describing. The pricing dynamics in that market, including Jio’s push to undercut rivals on recharge costs, were covered in Tech Insider’s reporting on Jio’s sub-₹5-per-day recharge plan.
That buildout has not been limited to mobile networks alone. India’s broader connectivity landscape in 2026 also includes a slower-moving satellite broadband story, with Starlink still waiting on regulatory clearance to launch commercial service in India even after building out ground infrastructure, a situation detailed in Tech Insider’s coverage of Starlink’s stalled India entry. The contrast is instructive: terrestrial 5G, led by Ericsson’s equipment customers, has scaled to over half a billion users in under four years, while satellite alternatives remain stuck in regulatory limbo. That gap reinforces why Ericsson is positioning India’s terrestrial 5G network, rather than any emerging alternative, as the primary venue for AI traffic growth over the next five years.
The technical backbone that makes India’s uplink-heavy AI scenario possible is the 3GPP’s 5G Advanced standard, which extends the original 5G specification with features aimed squarely at lower latency and better uplink efficiency, the exact properties Bansal and Ekudden describe as necessary for AI traffic. Readers looking for the underlying standards work can find more detail in Tech Insider’s explainer on how 5G Advanced’s Release 18 is reshaping wireless networks, and in a related piece on how mobile edge computing is changing 5G network design to push AI processing closer to the user rather than relying solely on centralized data centers.
Market Impact: Equipment Vendors and the AI-Network Link
For Ericsson specifically, the India commentary serves a clear commercial purpose. Network equipment vendors have spent the past few years watching core RAN (radio access network) revenue growth slow in mature markets as 5G rollouts matured and operators paused major capital spending. A market the size of India, still projected to add hundreds of millions of new or upgraded connections through 2031, represents one of the largest remaining opportunities for equipment sales, software upgrades and network consulting contracts.
Framing that opportunity around AI traffic growth, rather than simple subscriber growth, also fits a broader industry narrative that has emerged across telecom, cloud and chip companies in 2026. AI infrastructure spending has become one of the few consistently growing categories of technology capital expenditure, and companies across the stack, from GPU suppliers to network vendors, have an incentive to tie their growth story to AI demand wherever the data supports it. India’s AI compute buildout is itself accelerating, with reports of large-scale GPU deployments such as the 20,000-unit Nvidia Rubin order detailed in Tech Insider’s coverage of AM Intelligence’s India GPU order, underscoring that the AI compute side of India’s infrastructure story is scaling in parallel with the network side Ericsson is describing.
Historical Context: From 2G Catch-Up to 5G Leadership
It is worth remembering how recently India was considered a laggard in mobile network technology. The country’s 3G rollout trailed most of the developed world by several years, and even its 4G transition, which began in earnest only after Jio’s 2016 market entry, was widely described at the time as “catching up” to global standards rather than setting them. The shift to a market Ericsson’s own CTO now calls “at the forefront” represents one of the more significant repositionings in global telecom over the past decade.
That repositioning has implications beyond India’s borders. Equipment vendors, chipset makers and now AI infrastructure providers increasingly treat India as a proving ground for high-volume, cost-sensitive deployment at scale, a role previously associated more with China. Lessons learned from pricing, network density and usage patterns in India’s 5G market are already shaping how vendors like Ericsson plan deployments in other large, price-sensitive markets across Southeast Asia and Africa, the same regions covered by Bansal’s expanded regional mandate as Head of Networks for South East Asia, Oceania and India.
Predictions: Where This Goes From Here
- Expect operators to begin experimenting with uplink-specific pricing or network tiers as AI voice and video assistants become mainstream mobile features, since current flat-rate data plans were not designed around sustained uplink-heavy use.
- Equipment vendors, including Ericsson, are likely to compete harder for India’s next RAN upgrade cycle as the 2030 and 2031 subscriber targets approach, since India represents one of the few markets still adding 5G capacity at scale.
- Watch for India’s 1-billion-subscriber target to become a closely tracked benchmark through 2027 and 2028, with both government and vendor commentary using it as a checkpoint for whether AI-driven growth claims are holding up.
- Private 5G networks tied to “critical infrastructure” management, the use case Bansal specifically named, are likely to see increased pilot activity in Indian manufacturing, energy and logistics sectors over the next two years.
- Expect continued divergence between India’s fast-scaling terrestrial 5G market and its still-stalled satellite broadband sector, reinforcing Ericsson’s and other terrestrial vendors’ commercial position in the country through the rest of the decade.
These are analytical projections based on current trends and executive commentary, not confirmed roadmap items from Ericsson, the Indian government or any operator. They should be read as informed expectations rather than announced plans.
What Ericsson Has Not Confirmed
It is worth being precise about what this story is and is not. Ericsson has not announced a specific new product, network platform or commercial deal tied to the “AI traffic” commentary described above. The remarks from Bansal and Ekudden, as reported by Light Reading and the Economic Times, describe market analysis and forecasting rather than a formal investment or product announcement. Readers should not interpret this coverage as confirmation of a specific Ericsson contract, price point or customer deployment in India tied to AI traffic handling; none of those details have been made public as of this report.
What is confirmed is the data: the subscriber figures, the data usage statistics and the direct quotes from Ericsson’s own executives, all independently reported by Light Reading, the Economic Times, and corroborated by analyst commentary from Transforma Insights and GSA’s review of Ericsson’s June 2026 Mobility Report.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many 5G users does India have in 2026?
Indian government figures presented at the India Mobile Congress put the country’s 5G user base at approximately 550 million as of September 2026, with 5G services available in 99.9% of districts.
What does Ericsson forecast for India’s 5G subscriptions by 2031?
Ericsson forecasts more than 1.1 billion 5G subscriptions in India by the end of 2031, representing 81% penetration of total mobile subscriptions, up from 430 million (35% penetration) at the end of 2025.
Why does Ericsson say AI will increase mobile network traffic?
Ericsson executives Nitin Bansal and Erik Ekudden have said AI applications, particularly voice- and video-based AI assistants and augmented or virtual reality tools, require higher uplink speeds and lower latency than typical downlink-heavy traffic like video streaming. Ericsson’s scenario modeling suggests uplink traffic could be at least three times higher in 2031 than in 2025 because of this shift.
How much mobile data does the average Indian user consume per month?
According to Ericsson’s June 2026 Mobility Report, Indian users consume approximately 36-37 GB of mobile data per month on average, among the highest rates of any major market globally. An earlier Ericsson report put the figure at roughly 32 GB in late 2024.
When did India launch 5G services?
India launched commercial 5G services in October 2022.
What is India’s government target for 5G subscribers?
The Indian government has set a target of 1 billion 5G subscribers by 2030.
Is Ericsson launching a new product tied to this AI traffic forecast?
No specific new Ericsson product, network platform or commercial deal has been announced in connection with these comments. The statements from Ericsson executives describe market and traffic forecasting, not a formal product or investment announcement.
Who is Nitin Bansal at Ericsson?
Nitin Bansal is Ericsson’s Managing Director for India and Head of Networks for South East Asia, Oceania and India. He has publicly stated that India’s 5G growth has not plateaued and that AI applications will continue to drive new network requirements.
