Indian Fixed Broadband Improved, Mobile Networks Lag Behind

India has shown the greatest improvement in fixed broadband speed, recording average fixed download speed of 23 Mbps with an increase of 50.4 percent when compared to 2017, says Ookla’s 2018 year in review report.

In mobile internet, India with mean mobile download speeds of 9.11 Mbps, saw a 15.2 percent increase as compared to last year’s levels.

When compared to the most populous countries including China, the US, Indonesia and Brazil, India trailed in a tie for third fastest fixed speeds with Brazil.

Among the five largest countries in the world, China has the fastest mean mobile download speeds of 30.96 Mbps, while the US topped in terms of fastest mean fixed download speeds of 92.77 Mbps. China was second in fixed broadband download speed.

When the survey expanded to all countries, India’s ranking drops sharply. It ranked 111th for mobile download speed with 9.93 Mbps being the average speed, according to the Speedtest Global Index update for November 2018. For fixed broadband, India ranked 65th having 26.46 Mbps as the average download speed.

Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence platform reveals that the number of gigabit tests in New Delhi increased from 119 results in 2017 to 20239 in 2018, recording a huge increase of 16908 percent. Chennai also saw a 7481 percent increase from 763 results in 2017 to 57840 in 2018.

Ookla’s report highlighted that across the world, internet speed has increased over 15 percent in 2018. With a mean global speed of 22.82 Mbps, mobile downloads increased 15.20 percent over the last 12 months and mobile uploads increased 11.60 percent.

On a global level, fixed broadband speeds were nearly twice as fast as those on mobile in 2018. However, both mobile and fixed broadband speeds increased at a slower rate in 2018 than they did in 2017. World’s average download speed for fixed broadband was 46.12 Mbps which is 26.4 percent faster than last year. Upload speed increased 26.5 percent to 22.44 Mbps.― EE Times India