Internet in India

Internet in India, which began in 1986 with access only to the educational and research community and on 15 August 1995 with access to the general public In 2025, india have over 1 billion internet users. As of 2025, 7 in 10 Indians are now online, with 70% internet penetration. It is reported that in 2022 an average mobile Internet consumption in India was 19.5GB per month and the mobile data usage per month rose from 4.5 exabytes in 2018 to 14.4 exabytes in 2022. The Indian Government has embarked on Mega projects such as Digital India, BharatNet, Common Service Centres, UPI instant payment system, Startup India, and others to further expedite the growth of internet-based ecosystems.

In 1986, the history of the Internet in India began with the launch of the Educational Research Network (ERNET), The network was made available only to educational and research communities. even though the early pre-internet computer networks were operated in India since the late 1970s by the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and the Indian Military. along with general-use computer networks such as INDONET, NICNET, and VIKRAM. ERNET was initiated by the Department of Electronics (DoE), with funding from the Government of India and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), involving eight premier institutions as participating agencies—NCST Bombay, Indian Institute of Science, five Indian Institutes of Technology (Delhi, Mumbai, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Chennai), and the DoE in New Delhi. ERNET began as a multi protocol network with both the TCP/IP and the OSI-IP protocol stacks running over the leased-line portion of the backbone. Since 1995, however, almost all traffic is carried over TCP/IP.

In 1990, the ERNET was allotted Class B IP address 144.16.0.0 by NIC (then InterNIC). Subsequently, Class C addresses were allotted to ERNET by APNIC.

In January 1991, the first leased line of 9.6 kbit/s was installed in January 1991 between Delhi and Mumbai.

In 1992, all IITs, IISc Bangalore, DOE Delhi and NCST Mumbai were connected by 9.6 kbit/s leased line, 64 kbit/s Internet gateway link was commissioned from NCST Mumbai to UUNet in Virginia in United States.

In 1995, NICNet was established for communications between government institutions. The network was operated by the National Informatics Centre.

On 15 August 1995, the first publicly available internet service in India was launched by state-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). At the time, VSNL had a monopoly over international communications in the country and private enterprise was not permitted in the sector. The internet service, known as the Gateway Internet Access Service (GIAS), provided a speed of 9.6 kbit/s speed and was priced at ₹5,200 for 250 hours for individuals, ₹16,200 for institutional dial-up SLIP/PPP accounts, and higher for leased line services. However, for the next 10 years, the Internet experience in the country remained less attractive, with narrow-band connections having speeds less than 56 kbit/s (dial-up).

In 1997, Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) access was introduced.