The growth of broadband in India is not picking up as expected. According to a recent Telecom Regulatory Authority of India report, India added a paltry 0.15 million broadband users in July 2006. The total broadband connections in the country have reached 1.70 million.

The user base nearly quadrupled from 0.43 million in July 2005, but the growth in additions has been slow. In the first four months of the current financial year, 0.35 million users were added compared with 0.25 million during the same period last year.


India is a nascent broadband market with a low user base. The Broadband Policy of October 2004 had set an ambitious target of 3 million connections by 2005, 9 million by 2007 and 20 million by 2010. Going by the current rate of additions, the target for 2005 will be met only by end of 2006.

Till around a year back, Indian ISPs used to advertise connections with speeds upward of 32kbps as broadband. The broadband policy had defined broadband connectivity as "always-on" minimum download speeds of 256kbps. So the Government had to issue a strict warning to all ISPs in early 2005, asking them to refrain from calling connections below 256kbps as broadband.

BSNL advertising reduced broadband tariffs.

The real impetus in growth came from the launch of ADSL services by government-owned BSNL in 2005. It brought down the entry cost of owning a connection with cheap monthly plans and rented CPE. Service plans start at below US$5 per month today.

There are many reasons broadband growth has been slow. Lack of local language content, absence of a killer app and abysmally low download limits are the main causes.

Broadband content is not limited to text where the English language rules. There is no reason for broadband content companies not to think of producing local language multimedia content.