Taking telecom to rural India

Abstract

The phenomenal growth of Indian telecom sector in last ten years has been the most defining development in India s history second only to economic reforms in 1991. Indian telecom sector has played a pivotal role on two counts: growth and inclusion. The Telecommunication Industry and India s growth story have had a similar trajectory and in many ways it is believed that they have been feeding on each other s success. The New Telecom Policy NTP 1999 envisaged that India could achieve affordable and achievable communication facilities to the common man. While India has achieved it targets of achieving 250 million telephone connections by Oct 2007and has achieved its target of 500 million telephone connections in Nov 2009 well ahead of its schedule, the true benefits have not reached a vast majority of the rural population. The telecom penetration rates while growing to cover almost half of the Indian Population is tilted strongly in favor of urban India leaving rural India far behind at 19.1 percent. This leaves out a large portion of the Indian Population as 70 percent of India s population lives in rural India. Even Internet penetration in India has been growing at 20-25% however in spite of this; there are only 32 million regular users of the Internet in India which represent just over 12% of the urban population, and 5 million regular internet users in rural India which accounts for less than 1% of the rural population. Lack of awareness is one of the barriers to widespread usage of internet services in India.