With 81 mn Net users, India gets 4th slot

HYDERABAD, INDIA: India has been ranked fourth among the top 10 nations in the world with 81 million Internet users. United States leads the chart with 220 million Internet users followed by China (210 million) and Japan (88.1 m).

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 four-day global conference that begins at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre on December 3.

From about 70 million people (1.7% of the world population) who had access to the Internet at the end of 2007, the figure crossed 134.8 crore by 2007. Asia has the highest number of Internet users with an estimated 568.7 million people followed by the Americas with 377.9 million.

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 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 people.