India’s average Internet speed continues to be the slowest among countries in the Asia-Pacific region, that were part of the study conducted by content delivery network Akamai Technologies for its Q2 2016 State of the Internet report. India had the lowest average connection speed in the region at 3.6 Mbps followed by the Philippines at 4.3 Mbps.
The report is based on data collected by Akamai’s Intelligent Platform across several metrics like internet connection speeds, broadband adoption rates, mobile connectivity, and attack traffic.
Overall India’s average internet speed grew by 3.2% QoQ and 54% YoY, and ranked 113th globally. South Korea continued to have the fastest average connection speed in the region and globally at 27 Mbps followed by Hong Kong at 19.5 Mbps (4th globally) and Singapore at 17.2 Mbps (9th globally). Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and New Zealand were the other countries in the region with average connection speeds above 10 Mbps.
As we have mentioned time and again, the 3.6 Mbps average internet speed appears to be too high for India, as the TRAI defines broadband as internet connections above 512 Kbps. Airtel had even rejected this, and in a reply to TRAI’s draft paper on FUP said that a “service provider should be free to throttle the speed to 64kbps after the expiry of assigned data limit to the customer”. Note that the TRAI recently recommended redefining the minimum broadband speed to 2mbps.
Akamai’s definition of broadband internet on the other hand, is internet connections with speeds above 4 Mbps. In Q1 2016, India had 25% connections above the 4 Mbps threshold, an increase from 6.6% from last quarter and 129% YoY. India was the lowest ranked country in the Asia-Pacific region with the global rank 106, followed by Philippines a 33% adoption rate.
High speed broadband adoption:
Akamai defines broadband connections with speeds over 10 Mbps as high-speed broadband. The adoption of high speed broadband in India stood at 5.4%, a 11% increase QoQ and 251% increase YoY. As of now, the country ranks 72nd internationally, with some Asian countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka and, surprisingly, China lagging behind India.
In South Korea, 79% of the internet connections were above the 10 Mbps mark, while 97% were above the 4 Mbps mark. Singapore and Hong Kong also had an impressive adoption rate with 67% and 66% of the connections in each country above 10 Mbps, and 93% above 4 Mbps each. Interestingly, Thailand ranked 5th globally with 96% of its connections above the 4 Mbps mark.
15 Mbps connections:
There is a growing demand for 4K (Ultra HD) video content globally and even in India, given that 4K TVs are available for as cheap as Rs 30,000. According to Akamai, 10-20 Mbps bandwidth is the minimum speed required for seamless streaming of 4K videos. The 15 Mbps speed hits that sweet spot nicely.
South Korea ranked first by this metric, with 63% of the connection above 15 Mbps, followed by Hong Kong & Singapore at 46% and 45% respectively. In India 15 Mbps or more speed adoption increased 246% YoY and stood at 2%, an increase of 1% from last quarter.
Mobile connections:
India had an average mobile internet speed of 3.3 Mbps in Q2FY16, with peak speed of 19.1 Mbps. The fastest average mobile speed in Asia-Pacific at 11.1 Mbps, unsurprisingly, belonged to South Korea. As per the report, the UK has the fastest average internet speed globally at 23.1 Mbps.
Image source: Julian Burgess under CC BY 2.0
