It is exhaustively slow or exceptionally expensive, but Indians love their internet.
According to a recent survey, 82% of internet users in the country agreed with the statement “I cannot imagine life without internet.” The poll, by market and opinion research firm Ipsos, included 18,180 adults across 23 countries and was conducted between Sept. 12 and Oct. 11, 2016.
The availability and quality of networks are among the worst in India. The country logs the slowest average internet speed (pdf)—4.1 megabits per second (Mbps)—in Asia. Frequent power cuts plague several of its pockets and a sizable chunk of the population—240 million—lacks power supply.
Due to this, India has leapfrogged the desktop generation to become a “mobile first” nation. Government data from June 2017 shows that the country has only 300 million broadband users but over 1.21 billion wireless subscribers. It also houses the world’s second-largest smartphone user base. So, it’s no surprise that most of the web traffic—nearly 80%—here is driven by mobile web users.
