Netizens in India drop by 3 Million
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 06 April 2009, 15:55 IST   |    3 Comments
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Netizens in India drop by 3 Million
New Delhi: Courtesy the low broadband connectivity and the strict rules in the cyber cafes, India's netizens are losing their interest in the Internet. The number of web users in India has dropped by around three million in a year, reducing the number of netizens to 47 million in January 2009, said a study. With cyber cafes making photo identity cards mandatory to access the Web, the number of cafe users more than halved to 2.2 million in January from 4.5 million a year earlier, said the study, India Online 2009, reports The Economic Times. The study is based on a survey conducted by New Delhi-based online research company JuxtConsult. "Many ISPs closed down because of the change in laws which prohibited them from offering VPN (virtual private networking) services under ISP licence," Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) President Rajjesh Chharia said. According to ISPAI, the number of cyber cafes in India has dropped from 235,000 in 2006 to 180,000 in 2008. The period saw a couple of large internet service providers - Tata Nova, which had 1,000 cafes, and Dishnet DSL, with 700 cafes - shutting shop. "We had about 2,500 cyber cafes till a year back. Now they are down to almost 2,000," Sify President for infrastructure Naresh Ajwani said. He said most franchisees surrendered their licences because of police harassment. There is also a lack of push from the government and telecom operators to spread broadband as well as poor local content for the fall in internet user base. According to telecom regulator Trai, about two lakh new broadband connections were added in February 2009, but the JuxtConsult survey said the new broadband connections were mostly replacement by dial-up users.

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