It is boom time for the Internet with the number of subscribers increasing at a fast clip. As of June 30, the Internet subscriber base in the country had crossed 1.4 million, information technology minister Pramod Mahajan told the Rajya Sabha today.

Growth in the Internet subscriber base has taken off ever since private ISPs were allowed to offer services in November 1998. At the end of March 1999, VSNL had only 2.13 lakh subscribers, while the private sector share was miniscule. Thus, the June-end figure of 1.4 million subscribers to the internet means that the number of Internet accounts has increased almost seven times over a 15-month period. VSNL started offering Internet access in 1995.

Among the major ISPs, VSNL is the country’s leading ISP with an Internet subscriber base of 4.5 lakh. Caltiger, which offers free Internet access, has a subscriber base of 2.3 lakh while Satyam Online had a subscriber base of over two lakh. Among other major ISPs, Dishnet DSL had a subscriber base in excess of 1.65 lakh, while Mantra Online had a subscriber of close to one lakh. Among the states, the Maharashtra telecom circle, including Mumbai city, was in the first place with the highest number of Internet subscribers at 4.5 lakh connections, while the national capital of Delhi was the next with 2.26 lakh subscribers, Mr Mahajan told the Rajya Sabha.

The IT savvy southern region also figured among the leading users of the Internet. Tamil Nadu with 2.14 lakh subscribers and Karnataka with 1.40 lakh subscribers were in the third and fourth slots respectively.

However, not all states appear to have jumped on to the Internet bandwagon. Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh (West) had less than 5,000 subscribers. Andaman & Nicobar had just 133 connections and north east circle had 902 subscribers, Mr Mahajan said.

Mr Mahajan said access to Internet on local call basis from the nearest Internet node has been provided to all the district head-quarters except Kargil and Poonch in Jammu & Kashmir. The national Internet backbone being set up by the department of telecom services (DTS) would have 45 nodes and would be progressively extended to cover all the 322 secondary switching areas by the end of the year.