India’s Mobile Download Speeds Still Among the Lowest Globally

Ookla places India at the 109th position in terms of mobile download speed.

India has seen a marginal jump in the overall broadband download speeds in February 2018.

(Photo: istockphoto)

Only last month, UK-based wireless coverage mapping experts, OpenSignal had put India at the bottom of the list rating 88 countries on the basis of 4G data download speed. Even below Pakistan and Sri Lanka!

Now, Ookla, the Seattle-based internet analysis firm has come out with it’s own report on global internet speeds for both mobile and broadband data for the month of February.

The report places India at the 109th position in terms of mobile download speed and 67th for overall broadband speed in February 2018.

India languishes at the 109th position in mobile download speeds.(Photo: Speetest.net)

According to the website Speedtest.net report, average mobile download speed shot up to 9.01 Mbps in February from the 8.80 Mbps in November 2017. Despite the jump, India’s rank continues to stay 109th – still behind Pakistan (92nd) and Sri Lanka (82nd).

Broadband speeds in India hit a new high at 20.72 Mbps in February, compared with 18.82 Mbps in November 2017, the report said.

Norway was positioned at the top with mobile download speeds at 62.07 Mbps while Singapore topped the list in term of broadband download speeds with the average for the country being 161.53 Mbps.

Norway has the highest mobile download speeds in the world according to the report.(Photo: Speetest.net)

Ookla’s Speedtest Global Index compares internet speed data from around the world monthly. Data for the index comes from the hundreds of millions of tests taken by real people using Speedtest every month. It has 7,021 servers globally, out of which 439 Speedtest servers are present in India.

There are multiple factors which determine how fast a country's 4G speed can be, like how much spectrum is devoted to LTE, whether the country has adopted new 4G technologies like ‘LTE Advanced’, how densely networks are built and how much congestion is in those networks.

According to Amitabh Kant, chief executive officer of the Niti Aayog, in December 2017 India was termed the highest data consumer in the world with usage of 150 crore gigabytes, which is more than the US and China’s consumption put together.

India’s particular case of low data speeds can purely be attributed to the sheer congestion in the network as India is currently the largest consumer of Internet in the world.

The country’s current 4G structure is in desperate requirement of an extensive overhaul if we are to see any betterment in average download speeds. It is estimated that 90 percent of Indian users will have access to the Internet by 2020, and if the infrastructure doesn’t get better, it might take very long for India to secure a spot in the top 100.