Rural internet usage grows faster than urban

Rural internet usage grows faster than urban

Not just mobile telephony, rural subscribers are emerging as the fastest growing consumers of internet as well in the country. According to the Internet and mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the number of rural internet users increased from 29 million as of December 2011 to 38 million at the end of June and is expected to touch 45 million by the end of December this year. The penetration of internet users in rural India has grown from 2.6% in 2010 to 4.6% in 2012, a compounded annual growth rate of 73%, the industry body said in a report released on Thursday. Internet growth in the urban areas is expected to print lower — the data is due in a week, IAMAI officials said. At the end of December 2011, the total internet subscriber base in India stood at 121 million. More interestingly, mobile internet is seen driving rural internet penetration. “This is just the tip of the iceberg, in the next two years, a combination of affordable smart phones, optic fibre backbone and local language content is likely to change the beat all projections of internet growth in rural areas,” said Subho Ray, president of IAMAI. The industry appears to be in agreement on that. “The demand for mobile internet via smartphones is rapidly catching up in rural areas. Whereas earlier people in B and C towns would take a year to adapt to a new technology, today, because of the abundance of low-cost data packs, local language content and informative apps like Mandi Bhav, etc, rural people are having their first internet experience on the mobile, as handsets are more accessible than cyber cafes in smaller towns,” said Praveen Rajpal, CEO, Handygo Technologies, a mobile value added service (VAS) provider. “So, while it may have taken five years to reach the 100 million internet mark, it will hardly take one year to reach the 100 million mobile-internet usage mark. A further drop in handset prices will aid internet penetration in rural areas further. Handygo’s IVR apps and tablet distribution in rural areas has shown an 85% growth in WAP (wireless application protocol) this year from rural areas,” said Rajpal. As per Trai data, wireless subscription in urban areas barely increased (0.51%) from 596.98 million in May to 597.59 million at the end of June. Wireless subscription in rural areas increased 1.24% over the same period, from 332.38 million to 336.51 million. A CAG report also showed that the growth rate of mobile subscribers in rural areas during the last five years was higher at 485% compared with 233% in urban areas. As per IAMAI, at the end of June , there were 3.6 million rural mobile internet users. That’s up 7.2 times in the last two years. Mobile operators are seen fuelling this growth. “Most mobile operators today offer small data packs priced competitively at below `50 for unlimited data usage and downloads. Further content in regional languages and rural-specific apps help. This has resulted in a huge uptake in rural internet usage in the last 2-3 years. This growth is expected to continue, as the rural market is yet to be fully penetrated, while the urban market has almost reached saturation point,” said Somil Gupta, chairman, Planet 41 Mobi Ventures, another mobile VAS provider. And what is getting the aam-aadmi hooked to the Net? Entertainment, said IAMAI. Going by its report, 75%of rural users use internet for entertainment like games, music, photos and video downloads, while 56% use it for communication. Devotional apps are yet another major source of internet downloads. According to the government’s national broadband rollout plan, 2.5 lakh villages are to be Wi-Fi-enabled by November 2013. This will boost rural internet usage further.