Has Internet arrived in India? Has it become a tool of mass communication? Or is it still an urban phenomenon? Also, what is the percentage of Indian population that is connected to the net?
These are questions that are often raised when one debates the popularity of Internet in India. Here are four ways of of quantifying the penetration or reach of Internet in India.
1. By subscribers: The most popular is by the number of Internet subscribers. The Internet Word Stats estimates the number of Internet subscribers in India stands at 100 million. This is the latest estimate and was released in December 2010. (Source: Internet World Stats).
2. By connections: Another popular method is to list the number of connections. According to the Internet Service Providers of India, the number of Internet connections in India in September 2010 stood at 17.99 million (Source: ISPAI). This number includes both broadband connections and dial up connections.
3. By penetration: A third way is to establish the reach of the Internet is by penetration – that is as a percentage of the country’s population. If one uses this yardstick, then 8.5% of India’s population was connected to the Internet in December 2010. (Source: Internet World Stats)
4. By IP count: A fourth method to assess the penetration of Internet is by IP counts or the number of IP addresses being used by a country. This is not a very precise method, but a useful indicator.
According to Domaintools.com, the IP count in India in May 2011 stood at 34.8 million. This means that the Indian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) today can connect only 34.8 million devices – laptops, desktops, servers, tablets, printers, faxes etc – to the net. This is just one hundredth of the 3434 million IPs being used in the world (Source: Domain Tools).
Clearly, India needs to travel a much longer distance before it can consider itself to be an Internet power.
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