Nearly 1 bl Indians Still Have No Internet Access - CNET

The Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has grown increasingly focused on bringing more people to the internet, but the majority of the country's citizens are still offline.

Nearly one billion people in India are yet to connect to the internet, according to a World Bank report.As of 2014, India's population was estimated to be around 1.3 billion, according to data from World Bank and US' Census Bureau.

The report added that the internet adoption rate was high in government firms, but low for small and medium-sized businesses.

With a wider adoption of the internet, the World Bank says that India could see a major push in growth, job creation and general improvements in public services.

The report comes months after India's telecoms regulator banned Free Basics, Facebook's controversial initiative which aims to bring affordable access to select internet services to less developed countries. At the time, privacy advocates in the country condemned Free Basics, noting that it was violating net neutrality, the principle of equal access to all types of content and services on the internet.

That's not to say that the Indian government hasn't done anything to bring connectivity to more people. In 2011, the government initiated the National Optical Fibre Network project to provide broadband connectivity to over 200,000 villages in the country.

Though India is the country with the greatest percentage of its population being unconnected to the internet, the World Bank report states that it still has the third largest amount of connected users in the world. It's beaten only by China and the US, for now.