To show the huge gap that exists between China and India on the Internet front, here are the latest numbers put out by China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology:
- 290 million, as of end November
- This is up 37 million in 5 months
- 80% connect via broadband connections, of which half are over ADSL
India has about 55-60 million Internet users (and not the 80 million that some government stats would have us believe). Most of the consumer access is on 256 Kbps or less. We have a long way to go. And sadly, even as we think about 3G and all that in India, no one is really pushing building out India’s broadband infrastructure for mass-market consumer Internet growth.
