Digital access, devices and internet use

Household possession does not establish that each member personally owns or can independently use a smartphone. Rural and urban figures are calculated by adding mutually exclusive categories printed to one decimal; rounding is retained.

Includes smartphones and other mobile phones. Ownership requires a device with an active SIM for personal use and does not require registration in the individual’s name. A shared phone is assigned using the majority-use rule.

Any mobile phone, not smartphones alone. Household access and personal ownership use different units and must not be subtracted as if they measured the same people.

Includes access using a mobile network; this is not fixed broadband penetration or the proportion of individuals who used the internet.

This narrower connection measure is not the same as all internet access, fixed/Wi-Fi use or service availability near a home.

At least one use from any location, on any device and for any purpose; not daily use, paid subscription or independent access.

An age-specific rate. It must not be relabelled as the share of all Indians using the internet. We use 93.6% from the report’s age-specific tables. The accompanying PIB summary gives 94.3% for ages 15–29; the detailed report gives 94.3% for ages 15–24. The figures shown here follow Statement 3 and Appendix A Table 3.

Includes machine-to-machine cellular connections and fixed wireless access. Multiple connections may belong to one person or organisation. These are not 1,312.25 million unique people.

Still a connection count, not unique people or households. Includes wireless and wireline broadband; one user can hold more than one connection.

An administrative subscription-to-population ratio, not the percentage of people who own phones. Do not cap values at 100 or combine service-area geographies with state data without checking definitions.

Includes machine-to-machine connections. Rural/urban densities are subscription ratios using the report’s geography and projected populations, not individual ownership percentages. Values above 100 are possible.

Conditional on already owning a mobile phone: the denominator is mobile-phone owners aged 15+, not all people aged 15+ or all residents. Calculated by adding the source’s mutually exclusive smartphone-only and both-phone-types categories: India 79.9 + 2.0 = 81.9; rural 76.0 + 1.9 = 77.9; urban 85.9 + 2.1 = 88.0. Inputs are rounded survey estimates. The three India categories sum to 100.1 because of rounding. No number of smartphone owners or whole-population rate has been inferred.