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[INTERNET CONNECTIONS]
A brief look into types of internet connections, and the recent trends of the market.


INTERNET DEVELOPMENT AND TRENDS

The India specific trends are mentioned as below
- India ranked #20 globally for number of unique IP addresses, with 2.63 million IPâ„¢s Up 42.91% year-over-year, and 1.69% from Q3 2008, in comparison, United States was ranked #1 with 114.1 million unique IPs


-- Indiaâ„¢s average connection speed was at 772 Kbps and ranked #115 in terms of average connection speed, Globally, the average connection speed was approximately 1.5 Mbps, The United States ranked #17 globally, with an average connection speed of 3.9 Mbps while South Korea ranked #1 with an average connection speed of 15 Mbps


-- India ranked #17 globally in terms of attack traffic, with 1.16% of observed attack traffic, in comparison, United States was ranked #1 with 22.85% of observed attack traffic


-- India ranked #148 globally for number of unique IP addresses per capita, with 0.0023


-- India ranked #62 globally for high broadband adoption, with 0.56% of connections at speeds over 5 Mbps

-- India ranked #81 globally for high broadband penetration, with fewer than 0.0001 high broadband IPs per capita in Q4 2008


-- India ranked #93 globally for broadband adoption, with 3.74% of connections to speeds over 2 Mbps


-- India ranked #118 globally for broadband penetration, with 0.0001broadband IPs per capita in Q4 2008


-- India ranked #55 globally for narrowband adoption, with 25.8% of connections at speeds below 256 Kbps






Dial up connection trends
Over the last few years the inclination towards Dial up seems to have reduced yet it remains one of the most used connection.The dial-up segment has over 90 percent market share during the year 2004-05 but got in less than 30 percent revenue share due low APRUs. During the year, there were constant efforts by BSNL and MTNL to offer innovative packages to attract dial-up users. Starting from flat plans and attractive schemes for the students then, Today the BSNL and MTNL offers direct dial up connections using 17222,
The dial-up access rate has been a bone of contention for long now. Even after charging just 10 paise per minute as the Internet service charge, at Rs 24“30 an hour a customer´s the monthly bill can become unaffordable. It makes better economic sense, for many, to go to cyber cafés and pay only Rs 15“20 per hour, and even avail the value adds that the branded cyber cafés offer.
Though dial-up has not been a profit-making proposition for many, with almost 90 percent subscribers using it, writing it off is not easy. Even in countries like the US, dial-up forms a sizeable number of the surfing population and co-exits with broadband services. However, the future definitely belongs to, Internet through cable or fiber to home, and wireless services. With cable TV reaching over 50 million households today, ISPs are seeing them as potential Internet users too. Even if 10 percent of these households were converted into Internet homes, it would give a massive boost to the industry.

Source: V&D estimates CyberMedia Research
The Lease line trends

Among the access technologies, growth in leased lines contributed to the revenue jump in a big way. Though the market share of leased lines is less, the high value connections”going up to almost Rs 2 lakh for a 2 Mbps line”results in major revenue collections. The number of customers jumped from 8,077 in FY 2002“03 to 12,782 in FY 2003“04.
TRAI listed the high prices of domestic leased circuits and international circuits as one of the major hurdles preventing growth of Internet leased line services. It has released a consultation paper on domestic leased circuits, proposing a downward revision of tariffs. The lease lines are dedicated lines used for a subscriber to provide the data and voice connectivity on non sharing basis. The cost of the lease lines is obviously higher than other technologies yet the prices are certainly coming downwards.

Internet Telephony

Internet telephony proves to be more profitable for the ISPs than pure access services. For an ISP, the average return from an hour of surfing on the Net comes to less than Rs 10 while one minute of voice over IP brings them almost Rs 4. Till 31 March 2004, DoT had permitted 121 ISPs to provide Internet telephony services and 43 of them have already started operations are providing services.
However, there are a few constraints that hold back this service from actually posing any threat to the telcos who offer long distance voice services. Internet telephony services are permitted only if the call is made from a PC in India to another PC or a phone. You still cannot dial a PC user or terminate a voice communication to a telephone within India.
According to VOICE&DATA estimates, in the FY 2003“04 over 90 million voice minutes were used over the Internet. US, UK, and Canada were the major termination destinations. West Asia is still not that hot, as the termination charges there are higher than in the Western nations.

Broadband Trends
From the consumer´s perspective, broadband gives the best user experience. The broadband policy of 2004 defines a broadband connection as an always-on internet access with a minimum speed of 256 Kbps from the point-of-presence (POP) of service provider which was later in the year 2008 rose to 2mbps always on access.
Broadband services continue to be in high demand, attracting millions of new subscribers worldwide each month, Over the past 12 months, approximately 80 million new broadband subscribers across the world signed up for high-speed access to the Internet. Sweden and The Netherlands have the best performing broadband Internet connections in Europe according to a study carried out by the Universities of Oxford and Oviedo. Japan was the global leader by a large margin in the study, with the United States and Russia ranked 16th and 17th, ahead of Bulgaria but trailing Finland.
In India according to figures released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, the number of broadband connections in the country has grown by 69 per cent at 4.15 million in May 2008, as compared to 2.46 million recorded a year ago. Total Broadband subscribers base has reached 4.38 million by the end of June 2008 as compared to 4.15 million by the end of May 2008, a growth of 5.5% according to TRAI. This also represents a growth of 74% over the subscribers numbering 2.52 million on June 2007.
The TRAI Projects that by 2010 India will have 20 million broadband connections. Strong trends that point to an ever-improving Internet penetration figures in India with observed unique IPs growing 43% every year and average connections speed well above 750 Kbps. The average connection speed is expected to grow further more in the coming quarters with the growing broadband adoption in the country.
The distribution of internet connections in the country.





Dial up connection
Lease line
Internet Telephony
Broadband



The Internet named so in 1984 has grown at a tremendous speed,
¢ 1977: 111 hosts on Internet
¢ 1981: 213 hosts
¢ 1983: 562 hosts
¢ 1984: 1,000 hosts
¢ 1986: 5,000 hosts
¢ 1987: 10,000 hosts
¢ 1989: 100,000 hosts
¢ 1992: 1,000,000 hosts
¢ 2001: 150 “ 175 million hosts
¢ 2002: over 200 million hosts
¢ By 2015, about 80% of the planet will be on the Internet
Source-



Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM) dynamic transactions and enterprise applications online, has announced the release of the fourth edition of its quarterly State of the Internet report, Akamai's quarterly report provides insight into key Internet statistics such as origin of attack traffic, network outages and broadband connectivity levels across the globe.




ISP Statistics
Total ISP Licenses 385
Total ISPs (Operational) 189
Tele-density 7.04 per 100
Internet-density 0.38 per 100
Broadband-density 0.018 per 100
Internet telephony 90 mn minutes
Number of cyber cafés 10,237
Source: V&D estimates CyberMedia Research