India’s Mobile Internet Speeds Improve But Still Ranks Below 100

India offers the lowest data rates in the world, but that hasn’t translated into a heavy addition of internet users.

Broadband speeds in India this year have improved greatly compared to the world’s populous countries like China, United States and Brazil among others. The country’s fixed line speed got a 50 percent bump compared to last year, offering a mean fixed download speed of 23 Mbps.

Interestingly, on the mobile side, India ranked at the bottom of the list, but still showed a 15.2 percent increase in average download speeds overall, offering faster average speeds than in countries such as Indonesia.

All these nuggets were revealed by Ookla in its yearly review for 2018. The same report highlighted that of the five largest countries in the world, China claimed the fastest average mobile speeds, while the fastest fixed download speeds were found in the United States and secondly in China, followed by India.

Having said that, India’s global ranking across the globe stood at a less impressive 65, while it is ranked at 111 for mobile download speeds, even after so much talk about 4G getting a move on this year.

It is surprising that even after mobile data rates have come down to the lowest in the world, the overall internet penetration, even via mobile is yet to reach its full potential. One expects drastic improvement in speeds with 5G, which is only expected to be available by mid-2020 to the consumers.

Also, the download speeds probably heavily rely on a consistent network, which is unlikely to be achieved in a heavy density country like India. The report also mentions that New Delhi, the capital of India, saw a tremendous increase in its gigabit speed results.

We saw the number of gigabit tests in New Delhi increase from 119 gigabit speed results in 2017 to 20,239 in 2018, that’s a mind-boggling 16,908 percent increase. Chennai, India saw a 7,481 percent increase (from 763 to 57,840).

Ookla Report

The landscape for broadband speed could also get a big push from Reliance Jio, which is setting up the base for its Jio GigaFiber service in over 1,100 cities.

The company has already done pilot tests across pockets of the country, with users claiming to get speeds as much as 1Gbps, something that brands like ACT Fibernet are already offering in top cities.

Clearly, India has a long way to go before it scales up the global speed chart, but the signs are encouraging and could get even better in years to come.