BENGALURU: India lags behind Sri Lanka with a global rank of 97 versus the latter’s rank of 73 in terms of Average Connection Speed (IPv4) by APAC Country/Region as per Akamai’s State of Internet report for the fourth quarter of calendar year 2016 (Q4-16). However, the average internet speed in India in Q4-16 at 5.6 Mbps has improved 36 percent as compared to the speed of 4.1 Mbps mentioned in Akamai’s State of Internet report for Q3-16. Year-on-year (y-o-y), India’s average internet speed has almost doubled, it has grown by 99 percent.

India was ranked 105 globally as compared to Sri Lanka’s rank of 75 in Q3-16. Sri Lanka’s average speed in the Q4-16 report was 7.3 Mbps, 21 percent more than the 6 Mbps average speed in Q3-16.

About 38 percent of the internet connections in India have peak connection speeds in excess of 4 Mbps, a low number when compared to the 97 percent that South Korea which is the world leader with average internet speeds of 26.1 Mbps. The overall y-o-y change in the percentage of connections for internet speeds above 4Mbps was 123 percent in the case of India. In the case of an internet mature nation like Korea, the y-o-y change was 0.6 percent while the quarter-on-quarter (q-o-q) change was 0.7 percent.

In the Asia-Pacific region, Vietnam and India were the only two countries/regions to enjoy double-digit growth, as they saw 4 Mbps Broadband adoption rates increase 18 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

The report speaks of positive developments in India, specifically mentioning Bharti Airtel’s launch of V-Fiber broadband service in the fourth quarter, offering 100 Mbps fixed broadband access. Initially rolling out in Chennai, Bharti’s service is slated to become available to 87 cities in India within a few weeks. Now if only TRAI could reclassify connections with speeds in excess of 2 Mbps as broadband as it had earlier. TRAI later backtracked then reduced the broadband classification speeds to more than a measly 512 Kpbs.