India’s fixed network broadband penetration remains low and is heavily skewed towards urban areas. While 65 percent of people live in rural areas, Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India data shows that they account for a mere 5.6 percent of total fixed broadband connections.
Paradoxically, that disparity is not as great as the figures suggest, looking at how facilities measure up, in terms of potential speed.
A comparison of Speedtest Intelligence data against rural and urban locations (based on India’s 2011 census) fails to show a large disparity between the two when looking at TRAI’s new speed categories, with 58.7 percent of connections in urban areas falling within the “Basic” speed category, compared to 61.7 percent in rural areas.
The new definitions of fixed broadband speed are::
“Basic” (2-50 Mbps),
“Fast” (50-300 Mbps) and
“Super-fast” (>300 Mbps)
As always, there is a difference between supply and demand; ability to buy service and the actual buying behavior; network passings and customer take rates. Looking at actual customers across rural and urban locations shows a disparity between urban and rural, but nowhere as great as population alone might suggest.
In fact, rural customers over index and lower speeds and under index at the highest tier of speeds, but even there within a few percentage points of difference.
One conclusion here is that supply is an issue, but demand is the bigger issue. Where networks are available, take rates are driven by conditions other than presence of the network.
The Ookla data suggests fixed network availability in rural areas is not the main reason take rates are lower than in urban areas.
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