The state of Internet connectivity in India

A decade ago Internet connectivity may have been considered a luxury, but the world's outlook on what I like to describe as the repository of collective human consciousness has changed radically. It's been several years since France has made access to Internet a human right. Finland has gone a step further and mandated access to a minimum of 1Mbps Internet connection a legal right to its population of five million. The minimum required bandwidth is proposed to be bumped up to 100Mbps by 2015.This makes one wonder how long will it take for India to implement the same for its 1.2 billion-odd population. Not anytime soon because roughly some 600 million Indians do not have access to electricity, let alone Internet access. Almost all of this underprivileged populace, however, resides in far-flung villages and towns. The metros and tier-2 towns, on the other hand, have a considerably better Internet penetration, and this is where most of our estimated 121 million strong Internet users are based out of.

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