India Ranks 112 In The World In Terms Of Average Internet Speed, Says Akamai

Akamai Technologies has released its State of the Internet Report for the 1st quarter of 2012 and reiterates the fact that Internet connectivity in India is poor and has a lot of room for improvement so that it can catch up to the fast speeds offered in other countries like Japan, US and South Korea.

The report states that the average Internet connection in the country was around 1Mbps during Jan-March 2012. This was a growth of 16% from the last quarter. We have reported about how Akamai’s last report for the last quarter of 2011 was disappointing. This quarter the speed of the Internet seems to have improved and but it still has a lot to cover. India is still ranked at 112 globally in terms of Internet speed according to this report. Other data which has been revealed in the report shows that India’s Internet speed increased as much as 20% year-on-year.

India lagged behind other Asian countries like South Korea (15.7 Mbps) and Japan (1.9 Mbps). At its peak, the Internet speed in India has been calculated as 6.9 Mbps. Compare this to Hong Kong’s peak (49.3 Mbps) and you will see how much we have to catch up to. Furthermore, the report also states that only about 1.2% of the connections in India have a speed crossing 4 Mbps. There has indeed been an increase in adoption which is stated to be somewhere at 85% for broadband, but the growth and adoption are not fast enough to catch up to the global numbers. Speaking of global, the internet speed increased by 14% globally over the last quarter and 25% over last year. The global average Internet speed from January to March, 2012 is calculated to be around 2.6 Mbps.

An increasing Internet speed is largely indicative of a bustling Internet economy. Slower the speeds, lower is the usage of Internet for business and entertainment. An example of this would be the lukewarm adoption that online movie streaming is receiving as not a lot of Indians can afford to stream movies right now. The first thing that should be put into place is a strong and scalable Internet infrastructure which would then power businesses operating online and offline but which use the Internet for their processes. Already we are seeing a large scale adoption of ecommerce and other Digital services in the country. The limiting factor here is the overall speed of the Internet in India. The Internet needs to be affordable and fast so that it can see more adoption and thus increase Internet enabled businesses which in turn can generate more jobs and help the economy.

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