India - only 4 million broadband users

India has 4.38mn broadband users

India has 4.38 million broadband internet users as of June 2008, a recent report from the country's telecom regulator Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said.

According to the report, the total broadband subscribers, internet users with download speeds in excess of 256 kilo bytes per second (kbps) has reached 4.38 million from 4.15 million it had at the end of May 2008.

The Trai statement also said that during April 2007 to June 2008 the country has almost doubled broadband users.

"We have only now reached a point where broadband is slowly entering the scheme of things of household users. The costs are still high. For instance, a household should shell out not less than Rs 500 a month for broadband connection and the costs only go up, depending on usage.

A further reduction in costs will only help grow the base," an official with a telecom service provider said.
The data pertaining to broadband only shows how India is still a pygmy in the internet users space.

Only a few days back, China became the capital of cyberia with The China Internet Network Information Centre (CINIC) revealed that its netizens reached 253 million by end of June, which is the highest in the world. It also said that it has the highest population, (80% of the internet users), of broadband users while the rest used low speed internet services.

The Trai statement said, the country added 8.81 million telephone connections (both wire and wireless) during June 2008 as compared to 8.46 million it added during May 2008. In the wireless segment, which includes GSM, CDMA and WLL, there was an addition of 8.94 million as against 8.62 million during May 2008.

This means that there has been a fall in the wireline users in the country, which decreased to 38.92 million from 39.05 million in May.
With this, the total telephone connections has reached 325.78 million (316.97 million at the end of May 2008). The overall tele-density now stands at 28.33% as against 27.59% in May