Broadband growth in India

A massive market for on-line digital publishing is in the making in India, where there are now 30.32 million Internet users in the country’s urban areas, according to a new report by JuxtConsult.

The Indian Internet population rose 28 percent from April 2006 to April of this year.

Of India’s 30.32 million web users, 25.17 million (83 percent) use the Internet on a regular basis. About 20 million Indian users access the web daily, while 5.15 million (17 percent) are occasional users who go on-line less frequently.

Broadband now reaches 77 percent of home Internet in urban India, and 74 percent of office-based Internet users.

The workplace accounts for 78 percent of Internet usage in India, up 16 per cent from last year.

It is interesting to note that Internet cafes, once thought to be the key access point for those Indians who can't afford a home computer or web access accounts, remained stagnant with 47 percent of Internet usage, up only 1 percent over the previous year.

In fact, cyber cafes only serve as the only Internet access point for just 1.4 percent of India’s regular Internet-using population.