The content available on the internet encompasses the world; even a phrase such as “rum bum tum” which carries no meaning for a person with average intelligence presents 647,000 results in 0.35 seconds on Google search. Did you say, “Ting xing bing?” Roll your eyes; 5,490,000 results in 0.25 seconds.

The Indian internet user has matured and has moved on to use more advanced applications of the internet such as net commerce, says a report on internet usage in the country by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI). Apart from that, it predicts the number of internet users in India to be 150 million by the year end – a miniscule percentage of the total population but a substantial figure in terms of absolute numbers. The figure is divided as 105 million users in the urban areas and 45 million in the rural areas.

“The projected figure (of internet users) should be viewed in the context of increased value of internet today; it is a powerful medium which provides content related to education, entertainment and health care with no sector of the economy remaining untouched,” says KB Narayanan, advisor, National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). He adds that users see value in the internet and use it to access content related to many fields and also to access e-commerce services such as railway and flight bookings.

Rajiv Aggarwal, CEO, e-governance, Spanco Ltd, assigns this growth to the rising number of inexpensive devices in smaller cities. He does add that service and information available on the internet and awareness spread about them by the common service centres (CSCs) have also led to the rise in internet usage.

Ashis Sanyal, former, senior director, department of electronics and information technology (DeitY), says, “150 million internet users indicate parallel growth in other areas like usage of internet-based applications, availability of internet-based VAS, awareness of citizens about what internet can do for them, and improvement in internet experience.”

Sanyal though adds that the growth of internet users in India is related to growth of mobile consumers in India, which would cross 1 billion by December 2012. According to the Wireless Intelligence Report, 30 percent of mobile subscribers in India are inactive; in that case too, the effective number of subscribers in India will be 700 million in Dec 2012. “In that context, 150 million internet subscribers is a very healthy figure,” he says.

Another interesting trend revealed by the report is the rise of internet users in the small towns in India. It says that 41 percent of all the urban internet users reside in towns with population of 5 lakh and less. It is also stated that the rural areas will house 31 million active internet users by December this year. This is disrupting revelation as most people associate internet growth with metros and big cities in India.

The reason for this, according to Narayanan, is that while in the metros the awareness level and reliability on internet has been rising during the past five years, it has only just started in the rural and small towns. Therefore, the growth rate of internet in metros is slowly plateauing while it is growing in the non-metros and small towns. He says, “All this is because the ultimate users, be it metro or non-metro, see great value proposition in accessing the internet.”

According to Sanyal, it is a general trend that growth rates become more visible in the underdeveloped areas. He attributes the growth of internet in the small towns to citizens, especially youth embracing a number of internet-based services. He says, “You have to remember that Indian people are now fast graduating in data and content related services after completing the phase of traditional voice services.”

“Non-metros are in the adoption state which is why there is a better growth,” says Aggarwal.

Hence, a mix of usable content and presence of accessible devices have led to a high penetration of internet in India, both in the rural as well as the urban sector. Mobile phones have contributed significantly to increasing the frequency of internet usage in India, which has shot up by 28 percent in the past year.

More and more people are accessing internet on their mobile devices; according to Narayanan, with the cost of mobile phones falling down especially in the smart phone segment, it would not come as a surprise if large number of users, both in metros and non-metros, use it as a preferred mode for internet access.

Aggarwal says, “Due to the prices of devices like tablets falling and the screen size of the mobile phones increasing and with applications like Facebook built into mobile phones, there is huge market for mobile internet in India.”

Even with internet penetration in India increasing steadily, there is still a need to make it more affordable and accessible to the last person in the country. As Narayanan says, “There is a need to replicate the mobile revolution in the internet space; the cost of mobile devices and tariff in India is lowest in the world, but that is not true for the internet.” He goes on to add that to get the poorest of the poor to access the internet, there is a need to bring down the cost of access devices and the cost of accessing the internet on a par with the developed countries of the world on a purchase power parity basis.

Content is king. Not all Indians are searching for meaningless phrases on Google anymore, they are accessing e-learning videos, reading articles and blogs and buying books and tickets online. It is not just Facebook and email, though the IAMAI report confirms that they are a big reason why people get introduced to the internet in the first place and the absence of which would affect the internet growth story in India. As Aggarwal says, “The social media and email both have contributed to a large-scale adoption of the internet with the non-business users. Therefore, the impact has to be analysed with a few cases but it seems the growth will slow down.”

However, Sanyal is of a different opinion; he does not see the extinction of email but claims that some quarters do report that Facebook usage will go down very significantly in the next five years. “In my opinion, internet will grow riding on various other applications; a significant portion will be from governance and other social sector areas, like education and health.”