Delhi Tops Broadband Subscriber Base in Urban Regions: Telecom Minister

Delhi, which has a broadband subscriber base of 8.70 million, tops the list of urban cites in India in terms of user base, parliament was informed on Wednesday.

"According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the urban subscriber base as on March 31, stands at 73.69 million and the rural broadband internet subscriber base stands at 25.51 million," Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said in a written reply to the Lok Sabha.

India has a total broadband subscriber base of 99.20 million.

In urban regions, Delhi was followed by Tamil Nadu (7.56 million) and Maharashtra including Goa (7.44 million) at the end of March 2015.

Karnataka has the highest number of broadband users in rural areas at 2.77 million, followed by Kerala (2.52 million) and Tamil Nadu (2.27 million).

"Poor infrastructure and power supply condition in rural areas, low computer penetration in rural areas owing to high cost as compared to houseold income in rural areas and low literacy are a few of the major reasons behind low rural broadband Internet penetration," Prasad said.

"Scarcity of relevant content in regional languages and Right of Way permission for laying of optical fibre and poor availability of poor optical fibre connectivity also added to the low penetration level," he added.