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India now has over 49-million internet users in the country according to this article in the Economic Times. No surprise that at 40 million, urban users account for a bulk of it, with rural net users making up the other 9 million. Regular net users, defined as anyone accessing the net at least once a month, number around 35 million (30-million urban and 5-million rural).
However, Internet World Stats puts the number of Internet subscribers in India at 42 million in 2007, while a December 3, 2007 IAMAI release has put the number at 46 million.
Back to the JuxtConsult’s ‘India Online 2008′ however, Internet penetration (as % of population) has crossed double-digit mark in urban India at 12%, up 3% from 9% last year, and rural penetration stands at 4.5%.

Other highlights:

• Every one in 10 urban Indians (12%) is now net connected. The number of urban netizens has increased by 33% in the last one year, from 30 million to 40 million. 75% (30 million) of these are regular urban users while rest, 25% (10-million), are occasional users.
• Over two-thirds (70%) of all internet users reside outside metros
• SEC C, D and E in urban areas now account for around half of all users
• Over 70% internet users prefer to access the net in Indian languages, with English users at just 28%, down from 41% in 2007.
• A majority, over three-fourths (77%) users, are between 19-35 years of age, up 10% from 2007.
• Overall, women account for less than a fifth, just 17.6%, of the 49-million odd Indian netizens, with urban women marginally higher at 18.2%
• Over half of all net users (51%) in the country are salaried employees in the corporate world. Wonder what implications this has for where the net users access the Internet from.
• South India contributes the largest share of internet users at 33%, with East under-represented at just 15%.
• Although for 44-million users (91%) emailing is still the most popular online activity. Faith in internet shopping is strengthening gradually, and a good 80% of regular online Indians are now buying through the net.

In a move which would have significant implications, Gujarat is planning to be the first state to provide high-speed connectivity through satellite-based data connections to all its 13,693 gram panchayats, by July this year, enabling video, voice and data offerings in the areas of e-governance, distance education, telemedicine, agriculture and interactive advisory and counselling services.
Each panchayat will have its own email address and more than 13,000 of them will be hosted on the state-owned data centre.
Bharti Airtel, the implementing agency, which began work on the project in January, plans to connect the panchayats with broadband connectivity at speeds of 2mbps. [Via]

Adding the 10.16 million wireless (GSM, CDMA, WLL) subscribers in March, India overtook USA to ranks at second place after China. The total wireless subscribers now stands at 261.09 million.
A total of 10.40 million telephone connections (Wireline and Wireless) have been added during March 2008 as compared to 8.49 million connections added in February 2008. This implies a reach of 300.51 million at the end of March 2008 against a reach of 290.11 million in February 2008 taking the overall tele-density from 25.31% in February 2008 to 26.22% in March 2008.
Broadband, defined as speeds above 256 Kbps, had a subscriber base of 3.90 million at the end of March 2008 against that of 3.47 million at the end of Fenruary 2008. Clearly we have a long way to go to achieve its target of 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010 – more so if TRAI actually goes ahead with its proposed definition of broadband.
Download the complete report here.

Related reads:
Mobile Internet On The Rise
Internet Reach On Mobiles Is 19 Times More Than Broadband

“Well over 3.5 billion mobile phones are in use around the world and organizations are harnessing this technology to help overcome humanitarian challenges,” according to Timothy E. Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation.
The recent report, Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use, examines emerging trends in “mobile activism” by looking at 11 case studies of groups active in the areas of public health, humanitarian assistance and environmental conservation.
These include the text messaging ‘nerve center’ that Oxfam-Great Britain and the Kenyan umbrella group PeaceNet created which collected alerts about violent outbreaks during the recent civil unrest and mobilized local ‘peace committees.’ The project served as a vital tool for conflict management and prevention by providing a hub for real-time information about actual and planned attacks between rival ethnic and political groups.
The GSM Association, together with a handful of non-profit and private sector groups in Kenya, developed another conflict prevention project that allows farmers to preserve their crops while protecting wildlife. The program monitors instances when elephants approach farmed land, and provides an early warning system via mobile that is reducing the incidence of human-elephant conflict in an area where as many as five humans and 10 elephants are killed each year.
Other case studies cover the areas of public health (such as connecting health workers to one another in Uganda), humanitarian assistance (such as alerting Iraqi refugees to food aid drop offs in Syria), and environmental conservation (such as using text messages to raise awareness about deforestation in Argentina).
About 86% of non-governmental organization (NGO) employees use mobile technology in their work, with 25% believing it has revolutionized the way their organization or project works. While the most common uses of mobile technology by NGO workers are voice calls (90%) and text messaging (83%), about 10% use mapping functionalities, 8% use it for data analysis, and 8% for inventory management.