India suffers poor net speeds despite broadband growth: study

While global internet speed had increased by 21 per cent and was currently pegged at 4.6 Mbps, in India it was still at 2 Mbps, which was not even half of the global figure. 

According to US-based internet content delivery network Akamai Technologies' second quarter 'State of the Internet' report, the maximum speed of an average connection globally was 25.4 Mbps while in India it was 14.4 Mbps.

Further, the mobile internet connectivity had also slowed in comparison to other countries in the APAC region, the report said. Japan's average mobile internet speed clocked at 5.7 Mbps, while in India it was just 1.4 Mbps.

However, the report said that the adoption rate of broadband services in India had seen an incredible growth, increasing by over by 5 times since Q2 in 2012.

The adoption rate is further expected to increase after Department of Telecom implemented the National Broadband policy.

According to the report, the greatest year-over-year hike in broadband adoption rates was observed in nations with least levels of adoption; Vietnam took the top slot in the report at 722 per cent while India was placed at the fourth position with 179 per cent hike, according to the report.

Further, the report also offered a glimpse of broadband traffic that participated in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. India, at 2.1 per cent, took the fifth spot, China (43.1 per cent), Indonesia (15 per cent), USA (13 per cent) and Taiwan (3.7 per cent) were the 4 countries with the most noteworthy extent of DDoS assaults, Akamai says.

While just 1.2 per cent of Indian broadband subscribers enjoy speeds of over 10 Mbps, this number was a high 78 per cent in South Korea. While in South Korea over 95 per cent subscribers enjoyed over 4Mbps speed, in India this figure was just 7.2 per cent meaning 92 per cent of Indian subscribers had sub-4 Mbps speeds.

India also had the lowest average mobile connectivity speeds in Asia at 1.4 MBps, as against Japan's 5.7 Mbps. Australia recorded the best peak speed of  114 Mbps, while Iran was placed at the bottom with 5 Mpbs. India fared somewhat better with a peak speed of 9.1 Mbps.

According to the report, traffic from the Asia-Pacific region saw an increase of over 65 per cent with 43 per cent of this coming from China while India contributed 2.1 per cent.