status of internet penetration in India

If you thought, India is an ICT or internet powerhouse, think again. Your impression might be based on India's high level of technical manpower in software development segment of the IT spectrum.

In December 2010, TRAI, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, has brought out its report on the status of broadband penetration in India. Some salient  features of internet in India as brought out in this report are:

In June '10, China had 120 million internet users, USA 85 and India 10. India stands at a very dismal 117th position (out of 159 countries) in global ICT development index.

Over the last decade there has been fast growth in internet penetration but it is less than satisfactory. By the broadband policy 2004, we should have 20 million internet subscribers by now.

The broadband growth is biased in favourof urban areas. More than 60% broadband subscribers are in the top tenmetros and tier+I cities and more than 75% connections are in top 30cities. Just 5% of the broadband connections are in rural areas.

Out ofthe urban Indians, only 32% are PC literate. Of the PC literate population, 72% claim to have used the internet, of whom three out of four are actively using Internet.

A large proportion of users access internet from office and cyber café.Cyber cafes continue to dominate the share (37%). However, accessing Internet through home has steadily declined over the years. This year, an interesting pattern has emerged with 4% of users accessing this medium through alternative sources such as mobile and kiosks.

There are 274.05 million wireless data subscribers who are able to use the internet from their mobile device at the end of September 2010 [out of about 688 million cellphone subscribers]. However, most of these are on 2G mobile networks with limited data capabilities. We also have 1.5 million high speed data card subscribers.

86.89% of total broadband connections are on DSL. The most common DSL technology deployed is ADSL2 and ADSL 2+.

There are 105 service providers who are currently providing broadband services. However, top 5 service
providers have about 90% share. State owned companies BSNL and MTNL together have about 70% market share.


Email is the most common purpose for which internet is used, followed by music and video, educational and information purposes and text chat. As compared to urban areas, music and video on internet is more popular among the rural users. 67% of rural users access the internet for this purpose as compared to 45% in urban areas.