India had 236.09 million wireless and wireline broadband connections at the end of December 2016, an increase of 22.7% over a three month period starting from September 2016, according to data published by telecom regulator TRAI. However, note that India also had 155.41 million narrowband connections in the country, which decreased from 175.17 million connection in September 2016. This takes the total number of Internet connections (wireline+wireless) in the country to 391.50 million. A majority of these Internet connections are mobile.

Between September and December 2016, total broadband connections in rural India grew by 5.5% and by 27.9% in urban areas.

TRAI defines narrowband as internet connections with download speeds less than 512 kbps, while the connections with download speeds faster than 512 kbps are classified as broadband. Broadband connections are the majority in India with a 60.3% share, while Narrowband connections held the rest 39.7% share.

Some observations:

1. Jammu and Kashmir had the highest growth rate of 17.56% in terms of subscriber additions, closely followed by Delhi with a growth rate of around 10.14%. However, the number of broadband connections in hilly areas like J&K, Himachal Pradesh, and the North East is still very low with a total of just 6.2 million connections between them.



2. Delhi also had the highest number of broadband connections in urban areas with 17.9 million connections, followed by Tamil Nadu with 15.76 million connections and Maharashtra with 15.29 million connections

3. In rural areas, Maharashtra had the highest number of broadband connections with 4.77 million connections followed by Andhra Pradesh with 4.67 million connections and Tamil Nadu with 4.02 million connections.

4. Overall (broadband + narrowband), Maharashtra (excluding Mumbai) had the highest number of Internet subscribers with 32.6 million connections, followed by Tamil Nadu with 30.72 million connections and Andhra Pradesh with 30.15 million connections.

5. On the Wireless segment (broadband + narrowband), Uttar Pradesh (East) circle had the highest number of subscribers with 101.6 million connections, followed by Maharashtra with 90.77 million connections and Bihar with 82.26 million connections.

6. On the Wireline segment (broadband+ narrowband), Delhi had the highest number of subscribers with 3.21 million connections, followed by Mumbai with 3.03 million connections and Tamil Nadu (excluding Chennai) with 2.54 million connections.