India's broadband growth slows to 6.5% in December quarter

Even as the government prepares an ambitious broadband program, Internet penetration in India is slowing down, according to TRAI numbers.

Rate of growth of Internet connections (including slow connections) fell to just 4.4% during the December quarter, or 23% compared to the last three months of 2009.

According to the latest data, India – which has 200 million households, had just 18.69 million Internet connections at the end of 2010. Out of these, only around 11 million were on fast connections or broadband – giving a broadband penetration rate of less than 1%.

In comparison, South Korea has a broadband penetration level of 95%, Sweden has 76% and Japan has a rate of 75% penetration.

India was supposed to achieve a 2% penetration rate – 20 million broadband connections – by 2010, but missed it by a mile.

The growth rate of both Internet connections and broadband connections have declined over the last several quarters. It went from around 12% quarter-on-quarter in the March quarter to 6.5% in December quarter of 2010.

The only silver lining to the cloud was that the proportion of faster connections – higher than 256 Kbps – is on the rise with every quarter.

It increased from 57.6% in September 2010 to 58.8% by end of December 2010.

Broadband penetration is likely to undergo a sea-change in the coming months as companies start rolling out wireless broadband networks based on Wimax and LTE technologies.

BSNL has already rolled out the Wimax network in many states like Kerala, but is yet to start roll out in most places such as Northern and Eastern India.

As of now, 86.29% (about 9 million plus) of the broadband subscribers are using copper wires. However, copper connections in India have been steadily declining – going from around 40 million a few years ago to 35 million at present.

MTNL Mumbai launches 10 Gbps Broadband on FTTH

Mumbai’s Largest Broadband Service provider Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) today announced the launch of path breaking technology Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) triple play High Speed Broadband service with speed up to 10 Gbps in Mumbai Telecom circle. MTNL FTTH Broadband service will also be launched in Delhi circle from 1st May, 2011.The commercial service will be launched in next couple of weeks in both circle. With the launch of FTTH technology MTNL can now offer High speed Broadband access up to 10Gbps and plethora of services based on Triple play(voice-video-data) services like IPTV, HDTV, 3DTV, video on demand , Bandwidth on Demand, Video conferencing , interactive gaming , and several other VAS which can be only possible through FTTH.

This technology uses optic fiber technology which can deliver world class Triple Play experience to the consumers the FTTH service relies on a Self-Healing Network,which is able to provide seamless triple play service, even in case of damaged of the optical fibre, the information will be re-routed through another line. The system deploys services involving voice, data and video communications irrespective of distance and location it provides all communication facilities by using broadband and land line network, including Internet access, IPTV, video-on-demand, content-based services, interactive gaming and VoIP services. The services will also support enterprise applications and features such as LAN, VoIP and video conferencing. MTNL’s FTTH Broadband Plans will start from Rs. 649 for Limited usage and Rs. 999 Mbps Unlimited Usage at 1 Mbps Speed. While 4 Mbps and 10 Mbps Speed Plans cost Rs. 3499 and Rs. 5999 respectively.

On this occasion Shri Kuldip Singh, CMD, MTNL, said “This latest set-up would provide impetus to the MTNL Data focused strategy and will be a new business stream for MTNL”.