The NDA-led government in India has been heralding Digital India and Startup India programmes as its major achievements. However, state of Internet speed in the country is not improving and it remains to have the slowest in contrast to other countries.
India has recorded the slowest 4G LTE speed in the world at an average speed of 6.13 Mbps, according to the “State of LTE” report released by UK-based OpenSignal. The country was ranked last out of 77 countries on the list.
Singapore has the fastest 4G network with an average speed of 46.64 Mbps, followed by the Netherlands and Norway. The large population and increasing number of Internet customer base are bringing down the network speed, notes the report.
Importantly, developed nations, including US and Russian Federation also ranked low in the data speed. Besides India, El Salvador, Thailand, and Algeria were positioned last on the list in terms of poor 4G speeds.
The aforementioned countries are lacking 4G network capacity to deliver connection speed much faster than 3G technologies, adds the report. India’s poor performance in 4G LTE speed is largely attributed to the million of new users who are experiencing the Internet for the very first time in the wake of falling prices of data packs.
Telecom service providers, including Reliance Jio, Vodafone, Airtel, and Idea have been competing aggressively and also bleeding profusely to offer cheap data packs.
Last year, OpenSignal had released a similar report on Reliance Jio. It claimed that even as Reliance Jio’s average 4G LTE speed was 3.9Mbps. The average peak speed – when the network was performing at optimal conditions neared at 50Mbps.
Previously, Ookla published a report and placed India at 109th position in speed with 7.65 Mbps. According to data from Ookla’s November Speedtest Global Index, Norway ranked first in the world for mobile Internet with an average download speed of 62.66 Mbps.
