The Indian government hopes to achieve a broadband base of nine million subscribers this year. India’s Communications and Information Technology Minister Dayanidhi Maran has told the Parliament the government hoped to reach this target by giving broadband connectivity to all gram panchayats, higher secondary schools and public health centres.
The government had earlier declared 2007 as the “Year of Broadband”. India had about 2 million subscribers at the end of 2006. That means it will have to add another 7 million subscribers in 2007, which is going to be a tough task since there hasn’t been any visible measures to do so. As for the long term target, the government hopes to have 20 million broadband subscribers by 2010. The state-owned telcos MTNL and BSNL have increased the bandwidth from 256 kbps to 2 mbps for broadband subscribers with limited usage plans.