India Ranked 89th Globally in Terms of Average Internet Speed: Akamai

Just like it does every quarter, content delivery network services provider Akamai Technologies has published its State of the Internet Connectivity report for first quarter of 2017. The report provides key global statistics regarding Internet connection speeds and broadband adoption metrics. While the report suggests that the global average connection speed increased 15 percent year-on-year to 7.2Mbps, India gained eight spots to reach global rank of 89 with average Internet connection speed of 6.5Mbps, up by 87 percent year-on-year during the same time period.

In Q1 2017, the average Internet connection speed in India rose 17 percent quarter-on-quarter. As for 4Mbps broadband adoption, India witnessed a 4Mbps broadband adoption of 42 percent in Q1 2017 with a YoY change of 81 percent, which was an 11 percent rise quarter-on-quarter. For 10Mbps adoption, 19 percent of Internet connections were found to be above the aforementioned speed, which is a 30 percent rise quarter-on-quarter, and 285 percent rise year-on-year. Finally, for 15Mbps adoption, 10 percent of the connections were said to be above that speed, which is a 405 percent rise year-on-year.

Notably, the report pointed out that India and the Philippines once again had the lowest average connection speeds among surveyed Asia Pacific countries/regions during the first quarter of the year.

"In India, the bottom-ranked Asia Pacific country/region, broadband ISP act announced the launch of Gigabit-speed Internet in Hyderabad, claiming to be the first Indian provider to offer such speeds to its customers," the report said.

Globally, in terms of average Internet connection speed, South Korea once again turned out to be the leader with highest average connection speed of around 28.6Mbps in the first quarter.

"Increases in connection speeds and broadband penetration have helped enable the Internet to support levels of traffic that even just a few years ago would have been unimaginable," David Belson, editor of the Report.

"One need only look to January's U.S. Presidential Inauguration, which broke traffic records for live coverage of a single news event delivered by Akamai, largely thanks to the combination of more viewers watching at increasingly higher levels of video quality," Belson said.

Globally, 4Mbps, 10Mbps, 15Mbps, and 25Mbps broadband adoption rates increased 13 percent, 29 percent, 33 percent, and 42 percent year over year, respectively.