Internet in India began in 1986 and was initially available only to the educational and research community. General public access to the internet in India began on 15 August 1995. By 2023, India had more than 900 million Internet users.[1] It is reported that in 2022 an average mobile Internet consumption in India was 19.5GB per month and the mobile data usage per month rose from 4.5 exabytes in 2018 to 14.4 exabytes in 2022.[2][3]
As of February 2024, the Internet is delivered to India mainly by 17 different undersea fibres, including SEA-ME-WE 3, Bay of Bengal Gateway and Europe India Gateway, arriving at 5 different landing points.[4] In 2022, it was reported that India is also a potential market of Starlink.[5] And apart from having one overland internet connection at the city of Agartala near the border with Bangladesh, India has also established a 2,300-kilometre undersea cable to its Andaman and Nicobar archipelago in 2020 and a 1,868 kilometre undersea cable to Lakshadweep islands to increase internet connectivity.[6][7]
Reliance has started the project of underlying submarine cable connecting continents of Europe and Asia and keeping India its centre India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) and India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) - the world's largest submarine cable system, are said to be ready between 2023 and 2024.[8]
While early computer networks were operated since the late 1970s by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, the military,[9] along with general-use computer networks such as INDONET, NICNET, and VIKRAM,[10] the history of the Internet in India began with the launch of the Educational Research Network (ERNET) in 1986.[11] The network was made available only to educational and research communities.[12] ERNET was initiated by the Department of Electronics (DoE), with funding from the Government of India and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), involving eight premier institutions as participating agencies—NCST Bombay, Indian Institute of Science, five Indian Institutes of Technology (Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Chennai), and the DoE in New Delhi. ERNET began as a multi protocol network with both the TCP/IP and the OSI-IP protocol stacks running over the leased-line portion of the backbone. Since 1995, however, almost all traffic is carried over TCP/IP.[13] The first leased line of 9.6kbit/s was installed in January 1991 between Delhi and Mumbai. ERNET was allotted Class B IP address 144.16.0.0 by NIC (then InterNIC) in 1990. Subsequently, Class C addresses were allotted to ERNET by APNIC. All IITs, IISc Bangalore, DOE Delhi and NCST Mumbai were connected by 9.6kbit/s leased line by 1992. In the same year, 64kbit/s Internet gateway link was commissioned from NCST Mumbai to UUNet in Virginia, United States. NICNet was established in 1995 for communications between government institutions. The network was operated by the National Informatics Centre.[12]
The first publicly available internet service in India was launched by state-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) on 15 August 1995.[14][15] At the time, VSNL had a monopoly over international communications in the country and private enterprise was not permitted in the sector. The internet service, known as the Gateway Internet Access Service (GIAS), provided a speed of 9.6kbit/s speed and was priced at ₹5,200 for 250 hours for individuals, ₹16,200 for institutional dial-up SLIP/PPP accounts, and higher for leased line services.[16]
However, for the next 10 years, the Internet experience in the country remained less attractive, with narrow-band connections having speeds less than 56kbit/s (dial-up).[17][18]
In 2004, the government formulated its broadband policy, which defined broadband as "an always-on Internet connection with a download speed of 256kbit/s or above."[17] From 2005 onward, the growth of the broadband sector in the country accelerated but remained below the growth estimates of the government and related agencies due to resource issues in last-mile access, which were predominantly wired-line technologies. This bottleneck was removed in 2010 when the government auctioned the 3G spectrum, followed by an equally high-profile auction of 4G spectrum, that set the scene for a competitive and invigorated wireless broadband market. 5G drives India's internet speed, ranking up 72 places, ahead of many G20 countries.[19] After the launch of Reliance Jio in 2016, Internet data rates dropped considerably, and telecom companies expanded their fiber optic networks in competition. Today, internet access in India is provided by both public and private companies using a variety of technologies and media, including dial-up (PSTN), xDSL, coaxial cable, Ethernet, FTTH, ISDN, HSDPA (3G), Wi-Fi, WiMAX, etc., at a wide range of speeds and costs.[20]
2020 marks a new era of Internet In India. With the formalisation and launch of PM WANI (Prime Minister Wi-Fi Access Network Interface) policy India, aimed at enhancing the proliferation of public Wi-Fi hotspots across the country. The primary goal is to increase internet connectivity, especially in rural areas, by creating a robust digital communications infrastructure. It is designed to function in a decentralized manner, with Public Data Offices (PDOs) operating, maintaining, and delivering broadband services to subscribers through Wi-Fi access points or routers. This policy has been leveraged by various projects across India to enhance public Wi-Fi access, create jobs and business and help increase the Internet penetration.[21]
Technologies
Overview
Wired Internet access technologies by usage share as of 30 September 2023.
In 2004, the government formulated its broadband policy which defined broadband as "an always-on Internet connection with download speed of 256kbit/s or above."[17] The definition was amended in July 2013 defining broadband as a "data connection that supports interactive services, including internet access, capable of a minimum download speed of 256kbps to an individual subscriber."[25][26] The minimum download speed was officially raised from 256kbit/s to 512kbit/s in August 2014.[27]
On September 1, 2021, TRAI increased the minimum broadband speed to 2Mbit/s.[28] The regulator announced that broadband would now be defined as "an always-on data connection, provided over fixed or wireless infrastructure, that is able to support multiple information and interactive services such as Internet access and on-demand video and offers a minimum downlink and uplink speed of 2Mbps to an individual subscriber from the point of presence (POP) of the service provider intending to provide the broadband service.".[29]
The worldwide broadband speed league ranked India 74th out of 221 countries with a mean download speed of 47.99Mbit/s as of 30 June 2023.[30] According to the Akamai Q1 2017 State of the Internet Report, the average internet connection speed in India is 6.5Mbit/s and the average peak connection speed is 41.4Mbit/s. Globally, India was ranked 89th out of 149 countries/regions by average internet connection speed and 97th by average peak connection speed. 42% of internet users in India have an average internet connection speed of above 4Mbit/s, 19% have a speed of over 10Mbit/s, and 10% enjoy speeds over 15Mbit/s. The average internet connection speed on mobile networks in India was 4.9Mbit/s.[31][32]
According to the November 2023 Speedtest Global Index, published by Speedtest.net, India was ranked 18th out of 145 countries by median mobile Internet speed and 87th out of 181 countries by median fixed broadband speed. The median fixed broadband download speed in India is 58.62Mbit/s, and the median fixed broadband upload speed is 50.42Mbit/s. Speedtest recorded the median download speed on mobile connections in India as 94.62Mbit/s and the median upload speed as 9.02Mbit/s.[33]
The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimated that about 60% of Indian internet users viewed vernacular content and only about a quarter of internet users were over the age of 35 years in 2019. The WEF also estimated that 1.1 billion Indians would have access to the Internet by 2030, with 80% of the subscriber base primarily accessing the Internet on mobile devices. The profile of India's internet user base was predicted to diversify by 2030 with 80% of users accessing vernacular content and with users over 25 years making up 45% of the total subscriber base.[35] There is also a digital gender gap with far more male Internet users in the country compared to female users. The gap is more pronounced in rural hinterlands compared to urban metros.[36]
Access to the Internet can be divided into dial-up and broadband access. Around the start of the 21st century, most residential access was by dial-up, while access from businesses was usually by higher speed connections. In subsequent years dial-up declined in favour of broadband access. Both types of access generally use a modem, which converts digital data to analog for transmission over a particular analog network (ex. the telephone or cable networks).[37]
Dial-up access is a connection to the Internet through a phone line, creating a semi-permanent link to the Internet.[37] Operating on a single channel, it monopolizes the phone line and is the slowest method of accessing the Internet. Dial-up is often the only form of Internet access available in rural areas because it requires no infrastructure other than the already existing telephone network. Dial-up connections typically do not exceed a speed of 56 kbit/s, because they are primarily made via a 56k modem.[37]
Broadband access includes a wide range of speeds and technologies, all of which provide much faster access to the Internet than dial-up. The term "broadband" once had a technical meaning, but today it is more often a marketing buzzword that simply means "faster". Broadband connections are continuous or "always on" connections, without the need to dial and hang-up, and do not monopolize phone lines.[37] Common types of broadband access include DSL (Digital Subscriber Lines), Fibre to the x (Optical fibre network), Cable Internet access, Satellite Internet access, mobile broadband via cell phones and other mobile devices among many others.[38]
There were 1151 Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offering broadband and narrowband services in India as on 30 September 2023. The ten largest ISPs account for 98.82% of the total subscriber base. Jio (49.99%), Airtel (30.16%), Vodafone Idea (14.94%), BSNL (3.06%) and Atria Convergence Technologies (0.24%) were the five largest ISPs by subscribers in India as on 30 September 2023.[24]
As on 30 September 2023, the five largest wired broadband providers in India are Jio (26.28%), Airtel (18.93%), BSNL (10.08%), Atria Convergence Technologies (5.92%), Hathway (3.01%). Other wired ISPs account for the remaining 35.78% of subscribers. The five largest wireless broadband providers are Jio (50.98%), Airtel (30.63%), Vodafone Idea (15.57%), BSNL (2.77%) and Intech Online Pvt. Ltd (0.03%).[24]
The total international Internet bandwidth owned by Indian ISPs was 42,133Gbit/s as on 30 September 2023.[24] International bandwidth is the maximum rate of data transmission from a single country to the rest of the world.[39]
During August 2015, there were no laws governing net neutrality in India, which would require that all Internet users be treated equally, without discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication.[44] There had already been a few violations of net neutrality principles by some Indian service providers.[45] The government had once again called in for comments and suggestions regarding net neutrality on 14 August, and had given the people one day to post their views on the MyGov forum. After this, the final decision regarding the debate was to be made.
The debate on network neutrality in India gathered public attention after Airtel, a mobile telephony service provider in India, announced in December 2014 additional charges for making voice calls (VoIP) from its network using apps like WhatsApp, Skype, etc.[46]
On 27 March 2015, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) released a formal consultation paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services, seeking comments from the public.[47] The consultation paper was criticised for being one sided and having confusing statements. It received condemnation from various politicians and Indian Internet users.[48][49][50] The last date for submission of comment was 24 April 2015 and TRAI received over a million emails.[51]
On 8 February 2016, TRAI took a revolutionary decision, prohibiting telecom service providers from levying discriminatory rates for data,[52] thus ruling in favour of Net Neutrality in India. This move was welcomed not just by millions of Indians but also by various political parties, businesspersons, industry leaders,[53] and the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee.[54]
Internet censorship in India is selectively practised by both federal and state governments. DNS filtering and educating service users on better usage is an active strategy and government policy to regulate and block access to Internet content on a large scale. Measures to remove content at the request of content creators through court orders have become more common in recent years.
Freedom House'sFreedom on the Net 2016 report gives India a Freedom on the Net status of "Partly Free" with a rating of 41 (0-100 scale, lower is better). Its Obstacles to Access was rated 12 (0-25 scale), Limits on Content was rated 9 (0-35 scale) and Violations of User Rights was rated 20 (0-40 scale).[55] India was ranked 29th out of the 65 countries included in the report.[56]
In the 2022 report], the rating was increased from 41 to 51 (lower is better). Its Obstacles to Access were rated 13 (0-25 scale), Limits on Content was 21 (0-32 scale) and Violations of User Rights was 17 (0-40 scale). India was ranked 37th out of 70 countries rated in the report.[57]
Ratings of India (from Freedom on the Net reports)
One of the major issues facing the Internet segment in India is the lower average bandwidth of broadband connections compared to that of developed countries. According to 2007 statistics, the average download speed in India hovered at about 40KB per second (256 kbit/s), the minimum speed set by TRAI, whereas the international average was 5.6Mbit/s during the same period. In order to attend this infrastructure issue the government declared 2007 as "the year of broadband".[58][59] To compete with international standards of defining broadband speed the Indian Government has taken the aggressive step of proposing a ₹690 billion national broadband network to connect all cities, towns and villages with a population of more than 500 in two phases targeted for completion by 2012 and 2013. Google and Tata have launched the Internet Saathi project to help increase digital literacy amongst women in rural areas. The network was supposed to provide speeds up to 10Mbit/s in 63 metropolitan areas and 4Mbit/s in an additional 352 cities.The Internet penetration rate in India is medium and accounts for 42% of the population compared to the rate in OECD counties, where the average is over 50%.[60][61][62]
Another issue is the digital divide where growth is biased in favour of urban areas; according to 2010 statistics, more than 75 per cent of the broadband connections in the country are in the top 30 cities.[17] Regulators have tried to boost the growth of broadband in rural areas by promoting higher investment in rural infrastructure and establishing subsidised tariffs for rural subscribers under the Universal service obligation scheme of the Indian government.[citation needed]
E-commerce industry
Number of Indian consumers who were expected to purchase something online in 2018: 120 million.
Number of Indian consumers who were expected to purchase something online in 2020: 175 million.
Number of Indian consumers who were expected to purchase something online in 2021: 289.1 million.[63]
Number of Indian consumers who were expected to purchase something online in last 2022: 312.5 million.[63]
Indian e-commerce industry net income in 2017: ₹2.46 trillion.
Indian e-commerce industry net income estimated in 2018: ₹3.02 trillion.
Indian e-commerce industry net income in 2019 proved the improvement of the socio-economy that it has attracted ₹2.58 trillion in only 6 early months of the year.
Data centers
BSNL Internet Data Centers, in collaboration with Dimension Data[64]
Trimax IT Infrastructure & Services Limited – Tier III data centers in Mumbai and Bengaluru[65]
According to the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), internet traffic in India increased by 30% during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A study by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) found that the number of Indians using the internet for education increased by 50% during the pandemic.
A study by the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM Ahmedabad) found that the number of Indians using the internet for healthcare increased by 60% during the pandemic.
A study by the World Economic Forum found that India was one of the countries where the internet played the biggest role in helping people cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
↑ After adding subscribers of MTNL to BSNL, because MTNL will merge with BSNL.
Related Research Articles
India's telecommunication network is the second largest in the world by number of telephone users with over 1.1 billion subscribers as of December 2023. It has one of the lowest call tariffs in the world enabled by multiple large-scale telecom operators and the ensuant hyper-competition between them. India has the world's second-largest Internet user-base with over 904 million broadband internet subscribers as of December 2023.
Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) is a set of communication standards for simultaneous digital transmission of voice, video, data, and other network services over the digitalised circuits of the public switched telephone network. Work on the standard began in 1980 at Bell Labs and was formally standardized in 1988 in the CCITT "Red Book". By the time the standard was released, newer networking systems with much greater speeds were available, and ISDN saw relatively little uptake in the wider market. One estimate suggests ISDN use peaked at a worldwide total of 25 million subscribers at a time when 1.3 billion analog lines were in use. ISDN has largely been replaced with digital subscriber line (DSL) systems of much higher performance.
Digital subscriber line is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), the most commonly installed DSL technology, for Internet access.
Dial-up Internet access is a form of Internet access that uses the facilities of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) to establish a connection to an Internet service provider (ISP) by dialing a telephone number on a conventional telephone line. Dial-up connections use modems to decode audio signals into data to send to a router or computer, and to encode signals from the latter two devices to send to another modem at the ISP.
Telecommunications in Australia refers to communication in Australia through electronic means, using devices such as telephone, television, radio or computer, and services such as the telephony and broadband networks. Telecommunications have always been important in Australia given the "tyranny of distance" with a dispersed population. Governments have driven telecommunication development and have a key role in its regulation.
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Internet access. The transmission medium can be coaxial cable, optical fiber, wireless Internet (radio), twisted pair cable, or satellite.
Internet access is a facility or service that provides connectivity for a computer, a computer network, or other network device to the Internet, and for individuals or organizations to access or use applications such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is offered for sale by an international hierarchy of Internet service providers (ISPs) using various networking technologies. At the retail level, many organizations, including municipal entities, also provide cost-free access to the general public.
Satellite Internet access is Internet access provided through communication satellites; if it can sustain high speeds, it is termed satellite broadband. Modern consumer grade satellite Internet service is typically provided to individual users through geostationary satellites that can offer relatively high data speeds, with newer satellites using the Ku band to achieve downstream data speeds up to 506 Mbit/s. In addition, new satellite internet constellations are being developed in low-earth orbit to enable low-latency internet access from space.
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited is a 'Navratna' Category Public sector undertakings in India which is in turn under the ownership of the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications, Government of India. Headquartered in New Delhi, India. MTNL Provides services in the metro cities of Mumbai and New Delhi in India and in the island nation of Mauritius in Africa. It had a monopoly in Mumbai and New Delhi until 1992, when the telecom sector was opened to other service providers. "एमटीएनएल है, तो सही है" {"MTNL hai to sahi hai"} & "Transparency makes us different" is its motto. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited currently holds 100% of its stock. . As of June 2021, it has 3.28 million subscribers. It is also a wholly owned subsidiary of a central public sector unit.
Internet in Australia first became available on a permanent basis to universities in Australia in May 1989, via AARNet. Pegasus Networks was Australia's first public Internet provider in June 1989. The first commercial dial-up Internet Service Provider (ISP) appeared in capital cities soon after, and by the mid-1990s almost the entire country had a range of choices of dial-up ISPs. Today, Internet access is available through a range of technologies, i.e. hybrid fibre coaxial cable, digital subscriber line (DSL), Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) and satellite Internet. In July 2009, the federal government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network. Subsequently, the roll out was downgraded to a Multi-Technology Mix on the promise of it being less expensive and with earlier completion. In October 2020, the federal government announced an upgrade by 2023 of NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services to FTTP for 2 million households, at a cost of A$3.5 billion.
Internet access is widely available in New Zealand, with 94% of New Zealanders having access to the internet as of January 2021. It first became accessible to university students in the country in 1989. As of June 2018, there are 1,867,000 broadband connections, of which 1,524,000 are residential and 361,000 are business or government.
The Internet in the United States grew out of the ARPANET, a network sponsored by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense during the 1960s. The Internet in the United States in turn provided the foundation for the worldwide Internet of today.
Internet in Brazil was launched in 1988, becoming commercialy available in May 1995. As of 2023, Brazil ranked fifth in the world with 181.8 million internet users. The country had an internet penetration rate of 86.6% as of January 2024. In March 2024, Brazil ranked 27th in the Ookla Broadband Ranking, with a median fixed broadband speed of 158.57 Mbit/s. Also, as per December 2021, Brazil had 41,4 million fixed broadband accesses, most of them FTTH. However, as per 2020, most Brazilians access the Internet through a mobile connection, with more than 200 million mobile internet access.
The prevalent means of connecting to the Internet in Germany is DSL, introduced by Deutsche Telekom in 1999. Other technologies such as Cable, FTTH and FTTB (fiber), Satellite, UMTS/HSDPA (mobile) and LTE are available as alternatives.
The United Kingdom has been involved with the Internet throughout its origins and development. The telecommunications infrastructure in the United Kingdom provides Internet access to homes and businesses mainly through fibre, cable, mobile and fixed wireless networks, with the UK's 140-year-old copper network, maintained by Openreach, set to be withdrawn by December 2025.
In Romania, there are 18.8 million connections to the Internet. Romania's country code is .ro. The .eu domain is also used, as it is shared with other European Union member states. There were over 600 000 domains registered under .ro at the end of 2012.
A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information, while the receiver demodulates the signal to recreate the original digital information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded reliably. Modems can be used with almost any means of transmitting analog signals, from light-emitting diodes to radio.
BharatNet, also known as Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL), is a central public sector undertaking, set up by the Department of Telecommunications, a department under Ministry of Communications of the Government of India for the establishment, management, and operation of the National Optical Fibre Network to provide a minimum of 100 Mbit/s broadband connectivity to all 250,000-gram panchayats in the country, covering nearly 625,000 villages, by improving the middle layer of nation-wide broadband internet in India to achieve the goal of Digital India.
1 2 nicpib4. "Focus". Pib.nic.in. Archived from the original on 1 October 2016. Retrieved 30 September 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
↑ "Internet Usage in Asia". International Telecommunications Unit: Asian Internet Users. ITU. Archived from the original on 30 January 2012. Retrieved 10 January 2011.
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