Average Internet Speeds in India Among the Lowest, Globally

A report by Akamai, one of the largest content hosting companies in the world lists a number of statistics on internet connections across countries. While Internet connection speeds in India have slowly improved over time, the speeds are still not comparable to most other countries around the world. Yesterday, we talked about India ranking 17th in a list of countries in the order of the number of unique IP addresses. The report also states that the average Internet connection in India has a speed of just 0.8Mbps, as compared to some of the other countries. South Korea, for example tops the list with the average Internet connection having speeds of 14.4Mbps. This is roughly 18 times faster than what we get here, in India. The average connection in India also happens to be lower than almost every other country in this study.

Not among the fastest connections around

Another clear observation is that 35 percent of all connections in India are slower than 256kbps. The peak or fastest connections being used is just 5.2 Mbps, as compared to 39.5 Mbps in Hong Kong and 36.3 Mbps in South Korea. The number of users on such connections make up for just 0.5 percent. Clearly, Internet connection speeds have not reached a saturation point in India. Traffic demands have increased and based on the study, a fairly large amount of traffic originates here. 

Demands on platforms vary

There are other conclusions as well. 3G traffic volumes on laptops is, in fact higher than it is on mobile phones and even tablets. Laptop users download roughly six times more data than a tablet and mobile phone user. Out of this consumption, use of file sharing software is higher on laptops than on mobile devices. On the other hand, mobile and tablets users use their devices more for streaming audio more than laptop users. Smartphone users also use e-mail more than tablet users.