India’s mobile Internet use increases ninefold

Customers use their smartphones as they wait inside a Xiaomi corp. service center in Bengaluru, India, on Thursday, March 30, 2017. Once compared with Apple Inc. for its sleek smartphones and charismatic leadership, Chinese startup Xiaomi is seeking an image makeover as it tries to recover from a sales-growth slide. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

NEW DELHI: Mobile Internet usage in India has increased ninefold in a single year, after the launch of a new operator sparked a telecoms price war, according to a new report. 

Indians used nearly 1.3 billion gigabytes of data in March 2017 compared with around 150 million in the same period last year, said the report, Internet Trends 2017, published this week by the US investment fund Kleiner Perkins.