Broadband Policy: What Do We Know? What Do We Need to Know?

In some technology sectors in India, particularly in software services, public policies and private initiative have yielded rapid growth and good private and social returns. But this has not been true in the case of the internet, more so for broadband. Broadband adoption in India is and remains low, even falling short of modest official projections by half. This article summarises the current state of knowledge and argues that (a) we do not have a good understanding of the drivers and economic effects of broadband in India, and (b) this lack of understanding is largely due to the absence of a systematic way of monitoring the technological pulse of the nation.