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 !
[…] have been harping about bad Internet connectivity for far too long now on this blog – and even a recently conducted survey shows that we are going from bad to worse when it comes to Internet speeds in […]
Why such heavy moderation admins? Or are you scared of something? Last time I checked, this was still a democracy.
I have a 1 mbps internet by BSNL.The actual speeds I get are an avg 256 kbps.But I am charged for the higher bandwidth.The failures like non availability, sudden disappearance are too much.The physical connectivity is so bad that the wires snap often and it takes days for BSNL to repair.Other service providers are equally bad.I live in the IT capital.How do you say that India is developing?
Indian broadband is SHIT. I can't even play any games online because of the latency.
And guess what? I'm out of this country. For good. So it can fuck itself in the face as much as it wants.
Good luck, guys.
using turtle speed internet in India..its kind of shame that's the stats are decreasing rather than increasing..Waah re Waah India…..Indian IT ministry wake up….Do something about it…
I have a 1 mbps internet by BSNL.The actual speeds I get are an avg 256 kbps.But I am charged for the higher bandwidth.The failures like non availability, sudden disappearance are too much.The physical connectivity is so bad that the wires snap often and it takes days for BSNL to repair.Other service providers are equally bad.I live in the IT capital.How do you say that India is developing?
I have a 1 mbps internet by BSNL.The actual speeds I get are an avg 256 kbps.But I am charged for the higher bandwidth.The failures like non availability, sudden disappearance are too much.The physical connectivity is so bad that the wires snap often and it takes days for BSNL to repair.Other service providers are equally bad.I live in the IT capital.How do you say that India is developing?
I have a 1 mbps internet by BSNL.The actual speeds I get are an avg 256 kbps.But I am charged for the higher bandwidth.The failures like non availability, sudden disappearance are too much.The physical connectivity is so bad that the wires snap often and it takes days for BSNL to repair.Other service providers are equally bad.I live in the IT capital.How do you say that India is developing?
I have a 1 mbps internet by BSNL.The actual speeds I get are an avg 256 kbps.But I am charged for the higher bandwidth.The failures like non availability, sudden disappearance are too much.The physical connectivity is so bad that the wires snap often and it takes days for BSNL to repair.Other service providers are equally bad.I live in the IT capital.How do you say that India is developing?
You think comcast is a better company? :P what say Gurudatt?
I think India will never going to do it any better. this is because of greedyness of the Local internet providers and the huge population yes. we never have tried to produce anything better than MBAs. no good scientists or physicists and not enough honest people. India will never grow beond this.
is wimax give constant speed.
balaji&abdullah i agree with u both as unless any need nothing will change at an fast rate.india is a developing country an i has more issues to tackle with rather than internet here in india still literacy rate is 77.4% (appox)where in korea it is 98.3%(approx.) so here in india many of peoples stillare unaware of what computer is so thinking of net is still a huge thing here still peoples fight with there illetracy so it may took an time.still some private compaies evolved with there low budget ad low maintainance plans like-ortel communications so peoples took them and suffers later due to there less speed or we can say wrost speed.india introduced 3g with rates which can be really “killing” infact these 3g companies promises to there users are with high price but still same old 50~64kbps during use.so it depends not only on penetration but also the quality of services provided.
So is it supposed to be like this? Just because we have a huge population doesn’t mean that we have to drag everyone to the lowest common denominator.
@ balaji yadhav: Given the size of the country and its poverty, if we ignore speed for penetration, we won’t see real broadband speeds in our lifetime. We shouldn’t take care of penetration and at the same time, improve speeds for those who already have broadband. Technology has a trickle down effect. If all we did was spend all our effort into getting 56 Kbps internet in every Indian home, we’d would have seen the blogging revolution in India.
using slower than turtle speed internet in india
No matter what you think 800 kbps is not that bad. Unless you are an online gamer you dont need more than 2MBPS. All business applications and even online streaming videos works well with 2MBPS.
The reason Japan and S/Korea is the highest is because almost 90% of the youth in these countries are crazy about online multiplayer games like Warcraft etc.So they require higher speeds.
We dont need higher speeds we just need greater penetration first then we can talk about speed.
After talking to a lot of people i have noticed that a lot depends on the city you live in.. for eg beam in hydrabad is giving 10mbps for 1000/- and 20mb for 2500.. unbelievable but true.. Read the trak article here :
https://trak.in/tags/business/2011/05/16/10mbps-unlimited-internet-beam-tele/?utm_source=Trakin&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+trakin+%28India+Business+Blog+%21%29
Yes, do agree with some of those things. However, I am paying Rs 3000/month for 8mbps (50 GB limit). So it is not really $100 for 2-mbps w/ 5GB limit. Switch to Airtel if others are so expensive! In US I used to pay $60-70 for 5mbps/unlimited 2 years back. So while I agree situation is not ideal in India, it is not as bad as it is portrayed I feel.
Need to look at this in these numbers in the right perspective. Average is not a good indicator for India since the population is huge. Growth of narrow-band is most encouraging as this means internet penetration is increasing. I would love to see stats for city users and people who have had narrow-band before. I use 8mbps for the past 2 years and I am very happy. I do not understand what is Govt going to do in this case? People do not want to pay too much for internet monthly and hence pvt companies have so many low cost plans like 256kbps. Govt has also allowed 3G now, so what more can they do? It is a demand-supply equation. People need to pay more for higher speeds.
Sarang I agree people need to pay more for more speed.. but how much more?? almost $100s for a speed of 2-4mbps.? And it is just not the question of speed.. your give 20mbps but the total download limit of 5GB?? if you want to talk about cloud computing or video streaming then believe me this is just pea-nuts.. just consider one downloads the big linux distribution, or just update (or restore) an iphone, it takes more than 1-2GB. Have you seen the 3G ads? saying download, listen to music, do video streaming.. how? when your concept of unlimited internet is 10GB???? comeon start accepting the facts here, we are lagging way behind when it comes to broadband.!!!
You want people to stop using the internet at all? We’re all already paying near extortion rates for pathetic connections.
It is the most shameful thing of our country. we talk abt being technologically advanced etc and the internet speeds we are getting are still in KBPS at a shameless global rank of 143.. the govt should immediately intervene and declare that broadband will only be called at the speeds above 1mbps.
People are talking abt cloud computing, which will never work on our limited kbps networks. Ever the new 3G (world started using 4G) networks offer speeds and data limit you wont be proud of!!