[Air-l] Internet Usage in India

[Frederick Noronha]

Right. Rediff is popular because it's a local ISP (I don't like it
though, as it keeps throwing a lot of pop-ups at you). Cybercafes are
ubiquitous in urban areas, and you would be surprised how many of
these are around. I guess there would be more cybercafes in an Indian
city than in its Western equivalent (perhaps because of the low access
of 'personal' computers at homes and in offices).

In some parts of India, specially in the South where education and
social indices are better, you could be surprised to see a significant
proportion (no figures!) of young women busy at the cybercafes.
Higher-speed internet access (by local standards) is available at
fairly affordable rates of about 50 Euro cents per hour.

One stumbling block has been the hassle of using Indian language
solutions (in local scripts) in computing. Apart from proprietorial
software solutions, some groups like the IndicComputing network have
been working to change this, with mixed results.

Indian figures, like those in many so-called 'developing countries'
can often widely, so it might be hard to say what is the number of Net
users here. This has been further affected by lobby goups which make
varying claims (either to promote their interests, lobby for hardware
sales or whatever).

Take a look at what one network is saying --  (usual disclaimers, use
with caution):

Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)
Indian online gaming market touches Rs 210 million: IAMAI study
Indiantelevision.com ... 2004 Internet & Mobile Association of India,
Disclaimer | Copyright.
www.iamai.in/

Rgds, FN

On 17/04/07, Kath O'Donnell <aliak77 at gmail.com> wrote:
> from a personal perspective, when I was in India last year, the guys
> at work used http://in.rediff.com/ and yahoo.com a bit. there were
> lots of ads for it also (tv and billboards). also the arranged
> marriage sites were popular with those looking for marriages. I can't
> remember the site name in particular that a workmate showed me but
> they had profiles - photos, info about the person, caste, what they
> were interested in, salary, education, manglik status etc (I have an
> audio recording of him explaining it to me - can send u the link if
> that helps as I or he might have mentioned the site name. have a video
> of it somewhere too). a few music people I met used myspace for
> networking. the guys at sarai (sarai.net), a new media/arts org might
> be able to offer suggestions - especially if there's any research on
> it. perhaps even contact the newspapers there (eg Times of India) as
> there were articles in the paper about internet usage and how people
> were using it so they might have stats?
-- 
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