Chennai tops the country in fixed broadband speeds: report
15 Mar 2018
India ranked 67th in the world in February for download speeds over fixed broadband based on the Speedtest Global Index, with an average speed of 20.72 Mbps. But averaging across a country as large and diverse as India can mask some important differences.
For instnce, Chennai has the fastest fixed broadband speeds among the 20 largest cities in India, with a download speed of over 32.67 Mbps, which is 57.7 per cent faster than the rest of the country's average.
Bengaluru, which follows Chennai in terms of fixed broadband speed reported average speeds of 27.2 mbps, while Delhi ranked fifth with average speeds of 18.16 mbps.
Mumbai ranked lowest among the four big metros with an overall ranking of 8, with fixed broadband speeds averaging 12.06 mbps, according to a speed test by Seattle-based Ookla, a division of technology publisher Ziff Davis.
Metros such as Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam also scored higher than the country's average of 20.72 bps.
Net speed in Patna was by far the slowest compared with the rest of the country, with speeds averaging 62.4 per cent slower than the country's average. Nagpur, Jaipur, Kanpur and Ahmedabad round out the bottom five.
Besides Patna, download speeds in Kanpur, Lucknow, Pune and Nagpur are significantly lower than those i their respective states, it added.
Among states, those in Karnataka enjoyrd the fastest speeds in India, with a mean download speed of 28.46 Mbps in February, which is 37.4 per cent faster than the rest of the country. Tamil Nadu is a close second at 27.94 Mbps.
Mizoram is the slowest with a mean download speed of 3.62 Mbps in February, which is 82.5 per cent slower than the rest of India.
As per the report, South India occupies four of the five top spots on the list of states and union territories with the fastest broadband download speeds in India, and North India holds four of the top 10.
The states of north east India accounted for four of the five slowest states and union territories and seven of the ten slowest. Mizoram is the slowest with a mean download speed of 3.62 Mbps in February, 82.5 per cent slower than the country as a whole. Manipur takes second-to-last place at 4.30 Mbps and Tripura barely edges into third-to-last place at 4.52 Mbps.
The ranking is an improvement from January, when the country had come in on the 65th position.
The report noted India is making strides in an area where many countries struggle - connecting rural communities to the internet. Fibre connections have been extended to 250,000 (2.5 lakh) rural villages in India so far under the first phase of Bharat Net. In addition, Phase 2 of Bharat Net will expand the number of Wi-Fi hotspots that connect villages to broadband from 38,000 to 500,000 (5 lakh) so that every village in India has at least one.
This investment in rural connectivity might be one reason that the average broadband speeds seen across India's states and union territories don't seem to correlate to population density.
