Indians get caught in the Net

The growth in India's Internet subscriber base has surpassed the Asian average in 2003-04 after dipping below it in the previous year.

The number of internet subscribers increased by 90 per cent to 35 million in India while Asian net users grew 28.7 per cent to 328 million during 2003-04.

In addition, huge growth in number of mobile users in China and India has helped the developing block to surpass the number of subscribers in developed countries.

The main reason for the growth in developing countries like India was the low subscriber base, UNCTAD's Information Economy Report (IER), 2005 said.

The report added that in 2004 there were 895 million mobile subscribers in developing nations, 20.8 per cent more than the subscriber base of 740 million in developed nations.

However, the story is different as far as the absolute numbers for computers owners and internet users were concerned. Asia was far behind developed countries putting the developing countries at a disadvantage as Internet usage helped in obtaining and providing business information, carrying out financial transactions and making out deals, the report said.

Another disadvantage for developing countries was the high cost of linking domestic internet services to international backbone. This is because they had to pay full cost of connection, even if the link is used to carry traffic in both directions.

The report, however, said the situation could be remedied to an extent by addressing problems like insufficient competition among the internet service providers, small market size and lack of economies of scale.

It added that developing nations should take steps to fight cybercrimes and also strenghthen their infrastructure for providing e-services, to take advantage of the boom in e-business.

Further, net penetration in developing countries was as low as 6.9 per cent compared to 52.9 per cent in developed countries in 2004. The net penetration for Asia was only 8.7 per cent.

The report said 32.2 per cent Europeans and 62.6 per cent North Americans had acces to the Internet by 2004.

Similar trends can be seen for usage of computers. According to the report, the computer penetration for India is 0.9 per cent against the Asian average of 6 per cent in 2004. China, on the other hand, has penetration level of 3.7 per cent.

NET RESULT

Growth in India's Internet subscriber base surpasses the Asian average in 2003-04

Number of Net subscribers increases 90% to 35 mn in India

Asian Net users grow 28.7% to 328 million during 2003-04

Asia far behind developed countries in Internet usage