India Breaks 4 Mbps Average Internet Speed Barrier For The 1st Time; But Still Ranked Lowest In Asia: Akamai

Akamai has just released their ‘State of Internet’ report for Q3, 2016; and the starting of this report is pretty interesting. In the foreword by David Belson, Sr. Director, Industry & Data Intelligence at Akamai Technologies, he mentions smart devices, and inter-connected appliances as the future of 2017.

And the base of such ‘Internet of Things’ eco-system has to be faster Internet, seamless connectivity and reliable IT infrastructure.

Globally, Internet speed has increased by 2.3% to reach 6.3 Mbps, while global average peak connection is now 37.2 Mbps, which is an increase of 3-4% compared to last quarter.

The research by Akamai is based on the data gathered via Akamai Intelligent Platform, and based on the numbers, it seems that Akamai is now more empowered to predict the right future. In the 3rd quarter, more than 806 million unique IPv4 addresses are connected with this platform (increase of 6 million compared to last quarter), which means more data, and more accurate predictions about the State of Internet in the world.

As per the data gathered, adoption of IPv6 is now gaining momentum, as 6 million IPv4 have depleted, gone out of the circuit as there are now only 45 million unique IPv4 remaining in the Regional Internet Registries. Overall, adoption of IPv6 increased by 3-5% during Q3 of 2016.

India Breaks 4 Mbps Average Speed Barrier

There is some good news and lots of bad news for Indian Internet users here.

First, the good news.

For the first time, India has broken the barrier of 4 Mbps average Internet speed. As per Akamai, the average Internet speed in India during Q3 of 2016 was 4.1 Mbps, which is an increase of 14% compared to last quarter, and a massive increase of 62% compared to last year.

Now, the bad news.

Despite such stellar performance, we are still ranked lowest in Asia-Pacific, when it comes to average internet speed. We are right now ranked a dismal 105th, as countries like Philippines (#103 with 4.2 Mbps avg speed), Sri Lanka (#79 with 6 Mbps avg speed) and Malaysia (#63 with 7.5 Mbps avg speed) are ranked much higher than India.

Another interesting finding in the report is that India ranks much better at 74th when it comes to number of connections over 10 Mbps, which also means that we have significant number of slower connections, which averages out the speed to 4.1 Mbps.

Overall, Akamai noted that 30% of all Internet connections in India are now using a minimum of 4 Mbps speed, which is again a very optimistic view of the ground realities in India.

South Korea Still #1 in High Speed Internet

Overall, South Korea has once again topped the charts with 26.3 Mbps as average Internet speed, which has actually decreased by 2.5% compared to last quarter. Whooping 97% of all connections in South Korea are above 4 Mbps.

Hong Kong is at #2 position with 20.1 Mbps as average speed, while Singapore is at #6 with 18.2 Mbps as average speed.

If we speak about mobile broadband, then India witnessed a respectable 3.5 Mbps average speed, with a difference of 1.4 times between average time taken to ping a mobile compared to desktop.

Highest mobile internet speed was witnessed at UK with 23.7 Mbps average speed. Within Asia Pacific, Australia beat South Korea with 12.8 Mbps average mobile broadband speed.

Here is the full report.