'National e-Governance Plan Focuses On Building e-Readiness'

India has been ranked fourth among the top ten nations in the world with 81 million Internet users even as the world aggregate touched 134,85,72,040 by the end of 2007.

United States leads the chart with 220 million Internet users followed by China (210 million) and Japan (88.1 million).

Brazil comes next to India with 53.1 million users, UK 40.2 million, Germany 39.1 million, Republic of Korea 35.5 million, Italy 32 million and France 31.5 million.

The Internet Governance Forum has released these statistics on the eve of its third global conference that begins at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre today.

Asia has the highest number of Internet users with an estimated 568.7 million people followed by the Americas with 377.9 million.

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Europe ranks third in this list with 335.9 million users and Africa and Oceania close the rank with 51.8 million and 14 million users respectively, according to the IGF.

India, however, does not find place among the top ten nations in terms of broadband connections where too the US stands first with 73.2 million connections.

China has 66.4 million, Japan 28.28 million, Germany 19.6 million, UK 15.6 million, France 15.5 million, Republic of Korea 14. 7 million, Italy 10.8 million, Canada 9 million and Spain has 8 million broadband connections.

While there were a total of 13.5 million Internet subscribers in India, representing 1.15 per 100 people, broadband subscribers accounted for five million among them.

However, the number of users, who have online access but do not themselves subscribe, is a whopping 81 million or 6.93 users per 100 people.

“Internet is the platform through which we are trying to bridge the digital divide in the country,” said Ravi Shankar, joint secretary in the Union Information Technology Ministry.

The National e-Governance Plan envisaged provision of Internet access to six lakh villages through one lakh Common Service Centres (Internet kiosks) by the end of 2009. Of the total proposed, 20,000 kiosks have been rolled out so far, he added.

“The essence is to bring about a modicum of e-readiness through the National e-Governance Plan. The Department of Information Technology is also working on a plan to build the National Knowledge Network under which 10,000 institutions of higher learning and research will be connected through a 1-GB network and provide e-learning solutions,” Shankar said.

With the number of mobile phone users touching a staggering 300 million and growing by about eight million per month, the Government of India sees ‘mobile Internet’ as a further exponential growth platform. (PTI)