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.

Broadband – The Missing Ace

Bernard has a nice post titled ‘State of Innovation in India‘ over at ReadWriteWeb. While it makes an interesting reading, I feel he has left out one very important “Ace” – the state of broadband infrastructure in India.

I’d couple the broadband issue with the “reliable low cost telecommunications” and make the title more generic like “reliable, pervasive communication infrastructure”.

Broadband in India is still lacking on several fronts. For starters, based on my conversations with several folks, getting a broadband connection is a struggle in itself. It is unreliable and not “always-on” in the true sense. Frequent disruptions are a common thing. Only 20,000 new broadband connections were added in India in October 2007.

From what I hear, things are getting better. But as long as broadband is not pervasive and ‘always-on’, it still remains a big impediment to the innovation ecosystem – at least to the consumer Internet industry.

8 Mbps broaband line in India

You read it right..Airtel announced the launch of 8 Mbps broadband line on Wednesday. The service will initially be available in Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Kolkota, Delhi – NCR. Availability in Mumbai and Hyderabad will be after a few weeks.

The service is likely to cost around 2000 Rs. for the 8 Mbps pipe. Apparently a pay per use pricing scheme is also in the works. So, you can order the extra bandwidth as and when you need (and you get charged for it), while rest of the time, you can use your 256 kbps / 2 Mbps connection. A la bandwidth-on-demand.

via ET

If anyone has any additional details about the 8 Mbps pipe from Airtel, please let me know.

In the meanwhile, compare this – the median real-time download speed in US is 1.9 Mbps.

The great Indian telecom license frenzy

Back in August, TRAI decided not to put a cap on the number of telecom operators in India. And this has triggered a frenzy in getting telecom licenses.

Day by day, it looks like every big Indian firm, who is sitting on a pile of some extra cash, is applying for a telecom license. You have the real estate companies (DLF, Parsvnath, IndiaBulls Real Estate Ltd., Unitech Ltd.). And now, with Russian company Sistema acquiring Shyam Telelink, even foreign players are jumping in.

While some of the license applicants maybe serious about their telecom foray, I think majority are aiming to get a piece of the pie – and then sellout at a premium at a later time.

Just like DoT announced that no new applications will be accepted for mobile licenses starting Oct 1, at this rate, such an announcement should come soon for the telecom sector as well.

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