India has achieved 44.7 percent growth in broadband subscribers in 2018 vs 2017, according to TRAI data analysed.
“This is the lowest in the past 5 years (2014 onwards), since a lot of industry and government focus started towards increasing the broadband penetration in the country,” Faisal Kawoosa, founder at techARC, said.

Broadband subscribers – wired and wireless — have grown at a CAGR of 43.7 percent in the past 5 years taking the total number of subscribers to 525 million. India’s fixed broadband subscriber base declined to 17.6 million.

India has achieved the maximum addition in broadband subscribers in 2016, when Jio started its services commercially on September 5. The growth in broadband subscribers in 2016 was 73 percent. The yearly growth in 2017 was 54 percent.

The dismal performance of projects like BharatNet is one of the reasons for the slow growth of broadband in the country.

TRAI statistics says Reliance Jio is the number one operator in the mobile broadband segment. BSNL is the number one operator in the wired broadband space in India despite competition.