Broadband Internet Market in India: September 2015

Broadband internet (>= 512 Kbps download) market in India is steadily growing mainly driven by robust demand mobile subscribers. Total broadband subscriber base in India increased to 120.88 million at the end of September 2015 from 117.34 million at the end of August 2015, growth of 3.02%.

Majority of broadband connections are mobile device users (either mobile phones or dongles). In India mobile broadband connections were 104.28 million at the end of September 2015, 3.37% growth over previous month. While wired subscriber base increased by just 0.78% to touch 16.13 million.

Bharti Airtel is a market leader with 28.19 million broadband customers (23.32% share) followed by Vodafone (23.78 million), Idea Cellular ( 19.60 million), BSNL (18.94 million) and Reliance Communications (11.04 million). Top 5 accounts for 84.01% share of broadband internet market in India.

Interestingly, BSNL holds dominant position in wired broadband segment with 61.6% market share followed by Airtel with 9.8% and MTNL 7.0%. BSNL benefits mainly from its existing customer base and supremacy in fixed line telephone market where it holds 60.28% share.

While in Wireless Broadband segment Bharti Airtel holds an edge with 25.4% share followed by Vodafone (22.7%) and Idea (18.7%). More or less replica of their market share figures in mobile telecom market in terms of subscriber base.