India has 1.4 million netizens

Internet subscriber base in the country had crossed 1.4 million as on June 30, Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.

As per the statistics presented in the Rajya Sabha by the Information Technology Minister Pramod Mahajan on Thursday, total number of subscribers as on June 30 stood at 1,407,736.

Maharashtra telecom circle, including Bombay, was in the first place with the highest number of Internet subscribers at 450,000 connections, while New Delhi was the next with 226,000 subscribers.

Tamil Nadu with 214,000 subscribers and Karnataka with 140,000 subscribers were in the third and fourth slots, respectively.

Among the poorly spread internet access bases are Andaman & Nicobar with just 133 connections and north east circle with 902 subscribers, Mahajan said in his written reply.

Other circles which have not crossed the 5,000-subscriber mark are Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh (West).

Mahajan said access to Internet on local call basis from the nearest Internet node has been provided to all the district headquarters except Kargil and Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir state.

The National Internet Backbone being set up by the Department of Telecom Services would have 45 nodes and would be progressively extended to cover all the 322 secondary switching areas by the end of the year.

PTI

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