India's average Internet connection speed lowest in Asia-Pacific: report

Mumbai: A recent study conducted by global content delivery network service provider Akamai Technologies revealed that India’s “average internet speed” is the lowest in Asia.

The company’s Q4 2015 report, dubbed “State of the Internet”, sketches a detailed imagery of the current average Internet speeds, notable disruptions, IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 adoption, and broadband adoption across the globe.

While discussing Asia-Pacific (APAC) regions, the report pointed out that India still ranked last among the 15 listed nations from the region. On the other hand, South Korea bagged the top position with average Internet speeds up to 26.7 Mbps in comparison to India’s appalling 2.8 Mbps.

The report said: “South Korea was again the top country in the world for average connection speed, and the gap between it and lowest-ranking India widened from 18 Mbps to 24 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2015.”

The countries average peak connection speed is also the lowest among APAC countries at just 21.2 Mbps, which is not even close to leaders Singapore (135.7 Mbps).

The average page loading time in India is 3.9 seconds, which is not impressive, considering the vast number of new Internet enhancement projects deployed in the country.

Slow Internet growth

At a time when India is riding on the wave of digitisation, slow Internet speeds are a big setback to India’s far-fetched digitisation goals.

According to recent report, India ranks second on the list active Internet users with over 400 million plus users. Among the vast user-base, majority of the people in the country use their phones for accessing the Internet.

While Akamai has predicted the country’s average connection to be roughly 2.8 Mbps, the situation is far worse, as most people from rural areas don’t even get access to basic 512 Mbps connections.  

As for Urbanites, the connection speeds have improved drastically over the past few years, but unevenly distributed connections still continue to affect a large section of the urban Internet user-base.

This is one reason why numerous foreign companies and organisations are trying to introduce lighter apps and web pages for developing countries.

Moreover, tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have not only introduced a slew of services to boost overall Internet experience, but also showed keen interest in developing Internet connectivity in India.

However, all is not doom and gloom as Internet penetration is slowly but surely expanding in India. Akamai’s report pointed out that the country has made considerable progress in 4Mbps and 15Mbps broadband adoption rates in 2015.

With global companies showing more interest in enhancing the India’s Internet capabilities, we can only hope that Internet growth picks up pace in the near future.