Another day, another target for broadband usage in India. What makes it particularly irrelevant is that there will be elections in India shortly, and a new minister (maybe) will mean further delays, and new targets: Nevertheless, Telecom Minister A. Raja, speaking at a conference in Kuala Lumpur, has outlined his Digital Vision - by 2012, they’re setting a target of 500 million Internet users, with over 100 million broadband connections and 100 million broadband enabled devices. “India 500--100--100 should be the country’s rallying cry.” He’s put in a pitch for mobile broadband, with mobile Internet users in India being four times higher than fixed line Internet users, and Internet enabled handsets for as little as $50.

Raja raised the issue of digital divide, saying that nearly 70 percent of India’s population has been bypassed by the ICT revolution. PC penetration in India is less than 2.5 percent, as compared to some nations with over 80 percent household PC penetration. He mentioned a National Knowledge Network (which we’ve heard of before), and free content and subsidized bandwidth for institutes, as well as the setting up of 112,000 broadband enabled Common Services Centres (details on that here), a Public-Private Partnership model with the private sector contributing $1.13 Billion. Given that last year, the “Year of the Broadband”, was a complete failure, and with less than 4 million broadband connections so far, we’re far from the target of 20 million broadband connections by the end of last year. In that context, we’d recommend that you not base your plans on such targets.

But who knows - it’s been raining like crazy in Delhi (in May!) for the past couple of days, and if it snows here in July, we just might add 24 million broadband connections per year for the next four years.