Increasing broadband penetration in India

Abstract

The recent growth of Broadband in India is very significant and contributed much for increasing the Broadband penetration. However, there is much more to be done in providing broadband services especially rural and remote areas. There is also gap among the states in India. For the period Quarter ending Sep 2017 , total telecom subscribers of 1206.71 million it has reached Teledensity of 93.4%. However, the total number of Broadband subscribers are 328.89 million only, which comes to Broadband Penetration of 25.12 % . Out of which mere 1.39 % penetrations is due to wired broadband and the balance 22.78% contributions is due to mobile broadband services. There is a gap among the states, there are 7 service areas Assam, Bihar, Madya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, where internet penetration is low as compare to the National average. However actual penetration could be much less than these figures as the density of the customers having more than one sim is very high. Hence unique Mobile Broadband customers are much less than 22.78 %. One more challenging task is that the rural Mobile Broadband penetration is mere 9.28 % . ISPs/Telecom Service providers are concentrating Urban areas and profitable areas as compared to the Rural and Interior areas where both CAPEX and OPEX are very high. Due to economic reasons TSPs are heavily focussing in Urban areas, in addition due to recent fierce competition some of the players are existing from the business. In this scenario there is a need to encourage ISPs to offer Broadband services in Rural areas. It may be noted that the in additional 3G/4G access, users can get internet access through Wi-Fi Services which will be served by both the fixed backhaul and mobile network . Broadband access through smartphone/TAB for various applications are getting popular not only due to southward trend of the cost of the devices but also due to flexibility of accessing broadband in spite of the power supply interruptions which is very common in rural as well as remote areas. The problem of the power supply availability for limited hours can be overcome by use of Smart Phone/TAB instead of conventional PC. Hence the key issue is only the availability of Broadband services, and the fact is that as the prices in India is at rock bottom ISPs/TSPs are not coming forward in a Big way to upgrade their networks in Rural. The objective of this study to assess the present Broadband Status in India and various challenges being faced by the stakeholders in expansion of the Broadband infrastructure. To suggest various approaches for development of Broadband Infrastructure to increase the Broadband Penetration by providing Quality Broadband Services for all including rural and remote areas at affordable price.