India's internet speed crawling, avg speeds rise from 1mbps to 1.3mbps. Ranked 114 in netspeed

It finally looks like India is waking up to the state of the Internet across the world as a report has revealed that the country’s average Internet speed rose by more than 20 percent to 1.3Mbps in the previous quarter of 2013.

A report by cloud-computing firm Akamai Technologies has revealed that India had an average speed of only 1Mbps in the first quarter of 2012, and has since seen a rise of 0.3Mbps over the past year. The firm believes that the country could see a jump of over 40 percent in the next year.

"Based on current industry growth trends, we expect a 40 per cent to 50 per cent increase in connection speed over the next 12 months. This translates to anything between 1.7 to 1.8 Mbps,"said Bruno Goveas, Akamai Technologies Director of Products for Asia Pacific and Japan.

While the jump may seem like a big one to many, the picture isn’t too rosy when compared to the situation abroad. India is still lagging behind 113 countries in the world as far as Internet connections’ speed goes. The world over, 46 percent of Internet users get a speed of 4Mbps and up while 13 percent have an Internet connection that gives speed of 10Mpbs and up. In India, only 2.4 percent of Internet users get more than 4Mbps speed, up by 33 percent quarter-on-quarter and 66 percent year-on-year. Barely 0.4 percent users have connections that are faster than 10Mbps, up by 102 percent quarter-on-quarter and 85 percent year-on-year.

South Korea still ranks number one in the world with an average connection speed of 14.2Mbps while Honk Kong ranks first as far as peak connection speeds go with 63.6Mbps. Switzerland is in top position as far as adoption rates go, with 88 percent of users in the country getting speeds of 4Mbps and more and South Korea came out tops as far as adoption of high speed broadband goes, with 50 percent users enjoying speeds of 10Mbps and more.

According to Akamai, there are 16.28 million unique IP addresses in India this quarter, up from 13.3 percent from 14.3 million IPv4 addresses in the previous quarter. Globally, there are 733.8 million IPv4 addresses, a quarter-on-quarter leap of 3.1 percent and year-upon-year leap of 10 percent.

Goveas mentioned that connection speeds to the last mile (at home) have increased thanks to investments made by telecom companies, cable operators and service providers towards laying high-speed fiber cables to homes that ensure consumers get higher connection data speed. This holds true especially in urban areas. "Many users now get online via mobile phones. High speed data plans are very affordable with some innovative data plan offerings from service providers. Hence, we expect to see a rise is high speed connections," he said.

Akamai has also said it expects that Tier II and Tier III cities will show growths in the coming months thanks to investments by telcos and access to Internet from mobile phones.

ndia has come a long way in terms of technology, but Internet speed something that has downer in the country. You hear about it everyday, people saying that the Internet is too slow. Reportedly the internet speed in India is ranked below the average internet speed amongst the countries of the world. Sometimes the speed is actually so bad that it feels like the connection is out. Reportedly, corporates are working on improving the speeds further the next year or so. "We expect growth in speeds from users in Tier II and Tier III cities as well, and not just Tier I, given the investments from telecom companies , and with users accessing the Internet from mobile phones," says Goveas.

Internet connections with speed greater than 4Mbps in India accounted for 2.4% of the total connections in the country. However, this represents a 33% and 66% increase over the past quarter and year, respectively.

The number of internet connections with speed higher than 10Mbps, called high broadband by Akamai, has increased by an astounding 102% over the first quarter of the year. However, such connections only account for 0.3% of the total internet connections in India.

Worldwide, 46% and 13% internet users have connections with speeds higher than 4Mbps and 10Mbps, respectively.

As an optimist and technology enthusiast, I like stories that talk about improved Internet connectivity in India. Going into this information age, having a strong infrastructure is essential for India. Unfortunately, despite some of the promising announcements coming like the government of India investing several Billion dollars, Akamai says Internet in India sucks compared to rest of the world.

Back in March of this year, a press release from Akamai India gave us some insight regarding Internet speeds in India and the latest edition of Akamai's quarterly State of the Internet report, puts in perspective India's Internet connectivity with the rest of the world. Here are the stats and numbers from Akamai:

·         21.8Mbps—Highest (average) connection speed available in Taegu South Korea

·         114—India's rank for average connection speeds globally

·         0.9Mbps—average Internet speed in India (South Korea has the best at 17.5Mbps, and the global average is 2.3Mbps)

·         27%—Internet connections in India below 256Kbps (Narrowband connectivity, India ranked 5th)

·         8.4%—Internet connections in India that are 2Mbps or more (Broadband connectivity, India ranked 88th)

·         66%—Internet connections globally that are 2Mbps or more

·         0.5%—Internet connections in India that are 5Mbps or more [more? Seriously?] (High Broadband, India ranked 60th)

·         27%—Internet connections globally that are 5Mbps or more

·         9,602,386—Unique IPs in India

·         1.5Mbps—Average speed in Hyderabad, fastest connectivity in India (Chennai is second with 1.2Mbps)

·         0.8Mbps—Average speed in New Delhi and Mumbai

·         1.1Mbps—Average speed in Bangalore and Kolkata

·         1664Kbps—Average mobile speeds in India

·         204MB—Average data downloaded on mobile phones in India

These stats come in addition to some that I've previously written. In a January 2011 report, the Telecomm Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said India has 11.21 Million Broadband users and in November 2011, Nielsen said India has 80 Million Internet users. Figures attached with Akamai's report:

India – World’s third largest country by Internet population – is still struggling to reach to any justifiable network infrastructure level. The country is ranked at 114th position globally with an average Internet connection speed of 1.3 Mbps. Interestingly, in spite of being the second largest country, by internet population, average internet connection speed in India is the slowest in the region, according to the latest report from Akamai.

Eventually, APAC dominated at the global level as three countries from the region topped the list with fastest average Internet connectivity. In Q1 2013, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong all witnessed modest quarterly increase, growing to 14.2Mpbs, 11.7 Mbps and 10.9 Mbps Internet connectivity respectively. Further more, besides these three, Switzerland is the only country at global level that managed to surpass 10 Mpbs average Internet connectivity in Q1 2013.

Though, avg. Internet speed in India remained lowest in APAC region, with 20% Q-O-Q change, India registered the fastest growth. The state of Internet in China – world’s largest country by population and Internet population both – is equally deterring; Ranked at 98th position at global level, average internet connection speed remained 1.7 Mbps in China. To make it more worst, China witnessed negative 5.6% Q-O-Q growth in Internet connection speed.

While evaluating average peak internet connection speed in APAC region, research found India reaching 10.2 Mbps while Hong Kong topped the list with 63.6 Mbps. Besides Hong Kong, Japan was the only ASIAN country that had an average peak internet connection speed at/above 50 Mbps.

The report clearly highlights the bad state of Internet in India and China. Besides being at the bottom, yearly growth in both the countries is also not quite promising compared to other Asian countries. Majority of ASIAN countries, where average Internet connectivity speed remained in single digit, registered more than 30% year-over-year growth compared to 21% and 20% in India and China respectively.

Top section of the list remains intact as South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are the only countries having more than 10% adoption level of High Broadband (> 10 Mbps) in APAC region. In India the adoption rate remains modest 0.3% though, the growth remains promising as the country recorded 102% Q-O-Q change – highest among all ASIAN countries.

Unfortunately, India presents poor show in normal Broadband connectivity (>4 Mbps) as most of the ASIAN countries had double-digit adoption level compared to India with 2.4% adoption level.