Reliance Jio has the highest number of Internet subscribers in country

Karam Prakash

New Delhi, December 6

With 388 million, Reliance Jio has the highest number of Internet subscribers in the country, accounting for the 52 per cent of the market share, revealed a report by an NGO – Oxfam India.

It is followed by Bharti Airtel, which has 175 million subscribers. Ironically, the government-owned BSNL occupies fourth place with just three million Internet subscribers and accounts for only four per cent of the market share.

A report titled ‘India Inequality Report 2022: Digital Divide’ was out on Monday. The report indicates that the government sector has failed to find its footing in the central government’s own initiative ‘Digital India’ that was launched in 2015. The flagship scheme, BharatNet, with its aims to provide Internet connectivity to rural India by connecting all the 2.50 lakh gram panchayats by 2025 is obviously faltering.

In the face of giants like Jio and Airtel having started disseminating their 5G services in metropolitan cities, a pronounced urban-rural divide is obvious in the report.

Mobile ownership 30 per cent higher among men than women 

The reach of digital technologies remains limited to largely men. The Oxfam report claimed that the percentage of men owning phones is as high as 61 per cent while women owned only 31 per cent of phones in 2021.

Upper-caste, class hold key in Digital India

Eight per cent of the General caste had a computer or a laptop whereas less than one per cent of the Scheduled Tribes (ST) and two per cent of the Scheduled Castes (SC) could have access to it, suggests the new report.

The report claimed that India’s growing inequalities — based on caste, religion, gender, class, and geographic location — are being worryingly replicated in the digital space.