Airtel launches 16Mbps broadband in India

Bharti Airtel has launched 16 Mbps broadband, the fastest wireline DSL broadband connections in India. The service will be initially available in Delhi – NCR, Chennai and Bangalore with coverage extending to Pune, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata later.

The connection is available in two different plans:

Speed Combo 2999 – 16 Mbps speed with monthly data transfer limit of 20 GB for Rs 2999 / month

Speed Combo 4999 – 16 Mbps speed with monthly data transfer limit of 50 GB for Rs 4999 / month

Airtel had about 9.92 lakh broadband subscribers as of December 31st, 2008.

via release

State of the Internet in India

Akamai recently released their latest State of the Internet quarterly report (last quarter 2008).

Here’re the stats related to state of Internet in India:

% of Attack Traffic originating from India: 1.16%

Number of unique IP addresses: 2,629,923

Unique IP’s per capita: <0.01

Average Internet speed: 772 KBps

% above 5MBPS connections : 0.6%

% above 2 MBPS connections: 3.7%

% below 256 KBPS: 26%

As you can see below, the stats havent changed significantly as compared to the last figures reported in the 2nd quarter 2008.

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Never mind the $100 laptop, hello $10 laptop

Indian Government has unveiled plans to produce a $10 laptop as part of a government sponsored education scheme.  As per R P Agrawal, the laptop should be available within 6 months.

The laptop will have 2 Gig memory and Internet connectivity and run on a Linux flavor. $939 million have been earmarked for the project and I wont be surprised if the laptops are heavily subsidized by the government funding. But that’s still ok, if the govt can actually make it happen.

I still have my own doubts about the Internet connectivity and how successful this project will be. It’d be unfair to make any judgements or comments about it yet, since there’s no working prototype yet.

If we can make it happen though, it will be a huge step forward — Just like the TATA Nano, we can go unlock the potential in other emerging and underdeveloped countries.

Do you think the $10 laptop is feasible ? If its doable, do you think it will benefit our society ?

via release

Google launches mobile Internet bus in India

Google is taking to grass root approach to educate and increase Internet awareness in India by starting a mobile Internet bus in India. The bus will tour 15 towns across the state of Tamil Nadu and provide access to content in English and Tamil to people in these towns.

As per Prem Ramaswami, Google product manager,

It is like a pilot study (for us). More than 19 per cent of Tamilians prefer Google Tamil for accessing the Internet and that is also one of the reasons to launch the bus project from Tamil Nadu

What do you think of this grass root approach ? Do you think we need similar approaches to increase Internet adoption in smaller towns and rural areas in India ? Will it fly ?

via release

India has 81 million Internet users

As per figures released by the Internet Governance Forum, which meets at Hyderabad on Dec 3rd, India has 81 million Internet users. India ranks fourth in the world in terms of Internet users and US, with 220 million Internet users, tops the world.  China, with 210 million users, comes in a close second.

It seems that estimating the number of Internet users in India is pretty much like using a magic 8 ball. Shake the ball and chances are that every other time, you might just get a different number. Yipee !!

via ET

India had 2.6 million Internet connections in 3rd Quarter

Akamai released its ‘State of the Internet’ quarterly report, which indicates that India had 2.6 IP addresses in Q3, registering a 23% growth.

Key highlights of the report:

• India ranked No. 20 in terms of number of observed IP addresses with 2.6 million connections. In Q3, the growth in IP addresses was 23%
• In comparison, China had 38 million and Unites States had 109 million unique IPs, while being ranked at No. 2 and No. 1 respectively
• India ranks a low No. 153 in terms of number of IP addresses per capita, with 2.3 unique IPs per thousand people
• In comparison, China had 30 unique IPs per thousand people and United States had 360 unique IPs per thousand people, while being ranked at No. 94 and No. 6 respectively
• The percentage of Internet connections from India with speeds above 256 Kbps was at 74%, indicating gradual shift from dial-up speeds to high speed connectivity
• The percentage of Internet connections from India with speeds above 2 Mbps was at 5%, growing 16% compared to Q2
• In comparison, China had 4.3% connections above 2 Mbps and United States had 64% connections above 2 Mbps
• India ranked 12th in terms of global attack traffic origination in Q3, contributing 1.6% to observed global attack traffic – last quarter India was ranked at 15th

You can read the entire report here.

BSNL offers free dialup Internet service

It’s common knowledge that Internet penetration in India is miserable.

In order to make Internet more common place, BSNL has launched a scheme of free dialup Internet service for two months. All you need is a valid BSNL telephone connection and you can use it to access the free dialup Internet service. No registration is needed and local call charges still apply.

All in all, sounds great. However, 3 weeks since launch and only 1000 users have signed up the service yet.

What do you think ? Will this fly ? Will this scheme help more folks to get online ? Or just a fancy marketing gimmick ?

TRAI quarterly stats for mobile and Internet subscribers in India

TRAI released quarterly report for the quarter ending December 2007.

Some highlights:

• Wireless market grows 11.74% and total wireless subscriber base stands 233.62 million
• Internet subscriber base reaches 10.36 million
• Broadband subscriber base reaches  3.13 million users. Rate of growth in this quarter is 17.23%
• There are 57.83 million wireless Internet subscribers (capable of accessing Internet through mobile handset (GSM/ CDMA))
• 54% of ISPs failed to meet the benchmark of service provisioning/activation within 2 weeks

India Online – from a Global perspective

Erick@Techcrunch had an interesting post – The Internet from a global perspective. While US had the maximum number of Internet users (161.6 million), China was catching up fast (96 million).

With a user base of 25.2 million users, India came in at the 8th position. We (me included) keep whining about how Internet penetration in India is still negligible, but if you look at it from a global perspective, even with the pitiful penetration, we managed to come in at number 8. If the penetration increases by only 10% this year (wishful thinking), we’ll very easily jump two places in this list.

If you see the above penetration in terms of percentage of population, the table looks like below:

US – 53 %

china – 7.2 %

japan – 42.3%

germany – 40%

uk – 53.3%

france – 43.2%

south korea – 53%

India – 2.23%

And you can see exactly why China and India offer such a huge room for growth. The world’s most populous nations and the Internet penetration is still in single digits. Thanks to the forward looking communist regime, China is making tremendous progress in the Internet front (disregarding the online censorship, ‘great firewall’ etc.). Sadly, such aggressive efforts are still missing in India. The Indian Government’s initiative last year – “2007 – year of the broadband” was a big disappointment. Subscriber base grew at a much slower rate than projected. We need to act & act fast.

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Startup Idea # 2

Last week, I described one of the two ideas that struck me while I was in Bangalore. Here’s idea # 2.

How about starting an affordable conceirge service for everyday, household services ?

For instance, my friend was having a plumbing problem at his place.  The plumber agreed to drop by the day after around 2 pm. My friend decided towork from home so that he would be around when the plumber showed up. The plumber, of course, failed to show up. Repeated calls to the plumber’s mobile were in vain. The same thing repeated itself the next day. Finally, on the 4th day of the ordeal, the plumber showed up for the job, much to my friends relief.

Towards the end, my friend was so exasperated that I dont think he would have hesitated to pay a bit extra for some prompt service. His gripe was – “Kaash ek call mein kaam khatam ho jaata”.

And just like him, I dont think there’s a dearth of other folks (who’re strapped for time and super stressed) who’ll shell up a bit extra for added convenience.

I wont be surprised if such conceirge services already exist for the super rich and elite.  But such a service could be pretty successful amongst the IT demographic as well. And the service can be made affordable, considering that it can make up for the cost in volume.

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