The Internet infrastructure in India is improving with broadband speeds going up, though penetration is still low due to the high cost of bandwidth. However, the country still lags behind countries like Bhutan, Cambodia, Nepal, Nigeria, Laos and Zimbabwe when it comes to Internet download speeds.
According to Ookla's
Net Index, the average download speed in India was 4.18Mbps, ranking it at 130th position. In contrast, the average download speed in Nigeria was 5.14Mbps, while Nepal had an average download speed of 4.92Mbps, Cambodia had 4.66Mbps, Laos had 4.73Mbps, Bhutan had 4.41Mbps, and Zimbabwe had 4.20Mbps.
The top five positions were taken by Hong Kong at 71.22Mbps, Singapore at 52.75Mbps, Romania at 50.26Mbps, South Korea at 47.20Mbps and Sweden at 42.35Mbps in terms of download speeds. The US ranked 31 with an average download speed of 20.74Mbps, while the global average was 16.20Mbps.
Countries such as Afghanistan, Malawi, Cuba, Benin and Gambia were at the bottom with average download speeds of 1.13Mbps, 1.16Mbps, 1.21Mbps, 1.36Mbps and 1.46Mbps, respectively.
In terms of upload speeds, India's position was a little better as it ranked at 93rd position with an average upload speed of 2.91Mbps. Hong Kong recorded the highest average upload speed at 58.99Mbps, followed by South Korea at 40.06Mbps, Singapore at 37.14Mbps, Macau at 36.48Mbps and Andorra at 35.98Mbps. The US recorded an average upload speed of 6.30Mbps while the global average was 7.08Mbps.
According to Ookla, the company that offers Speedtest.net and its mobile apps which help in comparing and ranking consumer download speeds around the globe, the data is based on over 1.5 billion records. The company claims this is the largest number of broadband speed and quality results ever compiled.
As per the company, the results are based on millions of recent test results from Speedtest.net. "The value is the rolling mean throughput in Mbps over the past 30 days where the mean distance between the client and the server is less than 300 miles," it informs.