Broadband connections March 2013: India 15m, US 83m

India has 137 million and US 244 million internet users. The internet penetration of the two countries are far apart – India 11%, US 78%. The size of internet economy of India and US would be poles apart.

The latest report from Mary Meeker, the Internet analyst suggests,

There are about 2.4 billion Internet users worldwide, a gain of 8 percent from 2012, driven largely by emerging markets like Iran and Indonesia. And there are 1.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, compared with 1.1 billion a year earlier. That’s roughly 30 percent growth. In addition, mobile makes up 15 percent of Internet traffic over all.

Broadband User Base in India And US

Medianama’s latest broadband report says India had 15 million broadband users. The target was 20 million for end of 2010. Needless to say we are lagging behind.

I was surprised to read a report on US broadband user base,

• Top broadband providers in the U.S. added 1.1 million (net) new connections during Jan-Mar 2013.
• The total number of broadband subscribers was about 82.4 million in March 2013.
• A booming housing market and stronger economy, along with our growing need for speed and connectivity is the reason why demand for US broadband is booming.
• Cable companies have about 47.5 million broadband subscribers, while the remainder are with the phone companies.

While India is still struggling with increasing the broadband user base the US is talking about 400 Gbps speeds!

• India’s first private ISP Sify to stop home internet service