I don’t know what to say here – India seems to be on a reverse train. While globaly, Internet speeds are increasing drastically, India’s already bad internet speeds are going worse!
This is what the Akamai “state of Internet” report says – And unlike other surveys, Akamai’s report is based on actual internet speeds reported , so there is a slim chance that the report findings may be wrong !
In Asia Pacific region, India is the only country amongst all of them to see a yearly decline in average connection speeds.
Internet Connection Speeds in Asia Pacific
It is interesting to note that Worlds top 3 countries with fastest internet connection are in Asia – South Korea, Hong Kong & Japan – while some of the slowest also are present in the same continent. India ranks a extremely poor 143rd in the world. India’s average broadband connection is 0.8 mbps (about 800 kbps) as compared to 13.7 mbps in South Korea!
Broadband Connectivity Drops
But what is significant in the Akamai survey is that existing Broadband connections are also falling – ie: users have connections above 2mbps are dropping in numbers!
While the connections above 2 mbps dropped by 24% year on year, users having more than 5mbps speeds dropped by 30%. This is such a shame for a country which is called as the software & outsourcing hub of the world!
Indian IT ministry should seriously take a note of this and take drastic measures to improve the situation.
Indian Narrowband Connectivity increases max in APAC
Now, this is something that India does not want – and thats exactly where it has grown the maximum in whole of Asia Pacific – The Narrowband connectivity !
Narrowband connectivity essentially means users with connections slower than 256 kbps. India has more than one third of the internet users who have slower than 256 kbps (even if they have higher speed connections, they are getting much slower speeds) and, it is only growing. While in all of APAC, that number is declining, India witnessed 39% growth in narrowband connectivity !
Any hopes India will see average broadband connections upwards 5mbps? Keep dreaming !