Broadband Market, Internet Services and Forecasts - India

India - Broadband Market, Internet Services and Forecasts

While India initially embraced the internet with a degree of ambivalence, there was tremendous enthusiasm among dial-up users and an estimated 60% of internet users were still regularly accessing the internet via the country's more than 10,000 cybercafes. When it came to high-speed broadband access, however, there was a reluctance to adopt what was on offer, especially within the corporate sector, and the growth of broadband remained relatively slow for some time. By 2013 there were around 14.5 million fixed broadband subscribers a lowly penetration (by population) of slightly more than 1%. In the meantime, mobile broadband technologies have started to attract considerable interest in India. Having paid large licence fees on the back of the government's spectrum auctions, the operators were keenly promoting their mobile data services. Significant network rollouts had been completed and there was no doubt that this was accelerating the adoption of broadband. This report looks at the stage the development of broadband internet has reached in India and includes relevant statistics.

Key developments:

the fixed broadband market was growing at an annual rate of around 25% in early 2013;
fixed broadband penetration (population) was around 2%;
the take up rate for wireless broadband was accelerating rapidly;
the government has prepared a National Broadband Plan, although it does not have the profile expected of such a key document;
the government has placed a major emphasis on getting broadband into the rural areas.
BSNL launched its first foray into enterprise cloud services in India in early 2013.

Companies covered in this report include:

Aircel/Dishnet, Bharti Airtel, Idea/Spice, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, Vodafone Essar, Bharti Telenet, Reliance Infocomm, Tata Teleservices, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd (VSNL), Tata Indicom, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Augere, Dimension Data.