India logs 89% growth in Internet users

By agencies   |   Monday, 28 November 2005, 20:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: According to an UNCTAD report, India has an impressive 35 million Internet users registering a hectic annual growth of 89 percent. Though India lags behind China’s user base of 94 million, the growth in numbers is at much faster rate among the Indian web-users. Against an 89.4 percent increase in the Internet users, the growth rate in China is only 18.2 percent. According to the report, “In India, where liberalization has already progressed, international backbone connectivity has exploded - and this has had positive effects for the development of Internet-based activity in that country.” It indicated that while China has about three times the number of Internet users than India, the former has the international bandwidth availability, which is nine times over the latter. India has the international bandwidth availability of 3000, China has a capacity of 27,216. Despite a fast growth in numbers, the Internet penetration, measured by per 100 still remains at 3.2 against 7.2 per cent in China. The U.S. has an Internet penetration of 62.3 per 100; Sweden has the highest penetration of over 75 per 100.