NEW DELHI: At a time when the government is stressing on Digital India and using social media over the Internet to the full, there was a growth of a mere 5.11 per cent in the number of broadband subscribers between January (94.49 million) and February (97.37 million).

The number of subscribers using mobile devices (phones and dongles) went up from 78.66 million to 81.49 million, showing the largest growth of 3.59 per cent.

In comparison, the growth of wired subscribers was 14.45 million in February as against 15.39 in January and the growth of fixed wireless subscribers (Wi-Fi, Wi-Max, Point-to- Point Radio & amp; VSAT) went up from 440,000 to just over that same figure, thus signifying an increase of just 0.63 per cent.

The top five service providers constituted 83.53 per cent market share of total broadband subscribers at the end of February. These service providers were Bharti Airtel (20.88 million), BSNL (20.67 million), Vodafone (17.93 million), Idea Cellular Ltd (14.08 million) and Reliance Communications Group (7.78 million).

The top five Wired Broadband Service providers were: BSNL (9.98 million), Bharti Airtel (1.43 million), MTNL (1.14 million), Atria Convergence Technologies (0.65 million) and YOU Broadband (0.44 million).

The top five Wireless Broadband Service providers were Bharti Airtel (19.45 million), Vodafone (17.92 million), Idea Cellular (14.08 million), BSNL (10.69 million) and Reliance Communications Group (7.67 million).

Wireless subscribers with less than 1MB and 5MB data usage in a month have not been considered as internet/broadband subscribers by Reliance Communication Group and Idea Cellular Ltd respectively.