The low net of Bangalore

In what many would consider a surprising fact, Bangalore, the IT capital of India and also known as the Silicon Valley, is ranked low in terms of internet users.

This is really surprising considering that Bangalore is home to almost a million ITians or workforce of IT industry and it also houses almost all the IT majors in the world.

The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), in a recent report, ranked Bangalore, sixth in terms of internet users and Namma Ooru stood well behind Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad.

IAMAI had conducted the survey across several cities to look at the internet usage pattern

Surprisingly, Mumbai, where the IT industry started, took the first place with 14.3 million users — 8.1 million in the claimed category and 6.2 million active — as of March 2011.

Active Internet users are registered users and those who use Internet regularly and claimed are those who use Internet online.

Bangalore, with 2.2 million claimed users and 1.7 million active users, stood sixth.

Delhi, including the National Capital Region, (NCR) ranked  second, with 6.2 million claimed and 5 million active internet users. Kolkata had the third-highest number of internet users, with a user base of 2.4 million.

The survey showed that internet density is very poor in the metros, including Bangalore. It said that towns population of less than 2 lakhs, collectively have a much higher number of internet users than the top four metros put together-Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Calcutta.

Indian today has a total of 150 million Internet users and this is the third largest group in the world after China ( 575m) and the US ( 275m).

However, if we look at Internet users, the Internet penetration in India remains at 12 per cent as against 43 per cent in China and 80 per cent in the US.

Surveys have shown that an Internet user in India spends on an average 13 hour per week and this number will  reach 16 hours per week in the coming years.

India’s growth in mobile Internet has touched 950 million mobile subscribers. Of them, 50 million have access Internet via mobile handsets. Indian is adding 1.8 million Internet users every year.

Another interesting statistics is that India today is a land of 1.2 billion  and of them 934.1 Million  or 78 per cent have mobiles and

60.5 million or five percent of the populace is on social networks.