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Some numbers on Internet connectivity in India

Three reports, one from the government, one from comScore and a study put some numbers on the Internet connectivity in India. With 11.21 Million boradband users, Indians spent 5 hours on average watching video online in January.
Written by Manan Kakkar, Contributor

Last year I came across an article in the Forbes India magazine that shed light on numbers on broadband in India. According to the article, India had 7.5 Million broadband user with about 400 ISPs bought bandwidth from VSNL, Bharti and Reliance with roughly around 91Gbps being used from the 18.6 Tbps undersea capacity. These numbers are from February 2010. Here is an update on the numbers:

  • From 10.92 Million broadband users to 11.21 Million, a 2.7% growth since December 2010.
  • 771.18 Million mobile users - 512.26 Million are urban users, 258.93 in rural India.
  • Bharti, Reliance and Vodafone lead the mobile service provider marketshare, respectively. (TRAI and MediaNama)
  • comScore says 30.2 Million Indians are online.
  • 72% of these 30.2 Million watched videos online at an average of 58 videos and 5 hours in January.
  • Youtube represents 44.5% of video views in India with 780.7 Million views.
  • Facebook recorded 6.6 Million viewers watching 30.1 Million videos.
  • Metacafe got 3.9 Million viewers.
  • Network 18 and Rediff have a reach of 1.2 Million and 861,000 viewers respectively.

The comScore report says India has a long way to go when compared to the 80%+ video viewers in US, Brazil, UK and Singapore.   Today, with increased government interest in improving broadband connectivity in India and the launch of 3G, the numbers are expected to improve. Based on projections, 30% of India's population is expected to be connected over 3G by 2015. The study done by Wireless Intelligence predicts the following:

  • 3G connections to grow 3x from 2011 to 2015.
  • 80% 3G connections will be GSM and 20% being CDMA based.
  • Relaince to have 39% of the CDMA 3G connections, with Tata Teleservices at 30%.
  • Bharti to lead 3G marketshare at 18%, followed by Reliance at 15% and BSNL at 13%.

These are predictions and given the turmoil the Indian telecom industry is in, I wouldn't be surprised if there were changes in direction.

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