PMO has 34 Mbps average internet speed

The internet speed at the Prime Minister's Office is 34 Mbps as against an average internet connection speed in India of 2Mbps (megabytes per second), an RTI application had revealed, The Times of India reported.

In its reply to the information sought by Vinoth Ranganathan, co-founder of onlinerti.com, under RTI, the PMO said the National Informatics Centre (NIC) was providing an average of 34Mbps speed to the PM's office, the report said.

According to Ranganathan there was nothing wrong with the PMO having 34Mbps internet speed as the prime minister should have  better connectivity. He added, Google fibre in the US provided 1 Gbps (Gigabytes per second) connectivity to ordinary citizens.

He added, in India, the Startup Village in Kochi had 1Gbps connectivity which was almost 30 times the speed of our PMO.

The report quoted the recent "State of the Internet" quarterly report by internet content delivery network Akamai, to say India ranked 115 in the world in terms of internet speed, while South Korea had the maximum internet speed with 24.6Mbps.

The average peak connection speed in India was 14Mbps and only 1.2 per cent internet users in India enjoyed the internet speeds of over 10Mbps, the report added.

India was expected to have the second-biggest internet population after China, but was among countries with the slowest internet connectivity in Asia.

The Narendra Modi government plans a Rs1-lakh crore initiative under its Digital India programme in the next five years to improve internet and mobile connectivity in the country.

Communications and Information Technology minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, recently stated at the 'Digital India' conference that sectors like e-commerce could emerge a big industry due to the broadband connectivity and high speed internet in various parts of the country, the report said.