India’s average internet speed continues to be slowest among countries in the Asia-Pacific region, that were part of the study conducted by content delivery network Akamai Technologies for its Q3 2014 State of the Internet report.

The report is based on data collected by Akamai’s Intelligent Platform across several metrics. This report provides insight into internet connection speeds, broadband adoption rates, mobile connectivity, and attack traffic.

India’s average internet speed stood at 2.0 Mbps, the same as in the previous quarter. It’s currently ranked 115th internationally in terms of average internet speed. South Korea remains the fastest in the region with average speed of 25.3 Mbps, the only country in the Asia-Pacific region with average speeds above the 20 Mbps mark. Hong Kong with 16.3 Mbps and Japan with 15.0 Mbps complete the top three positions.

As we had mentioned the last time, the 2 Mbps average internet speed appears to be too high for India, as the TRAI defines broadband as internet connections above 512 Kbps. Keeping this in mind 2 Mbps average speed in India is practically impossible. However, the possible reason for this bloated number is perhaps the fact that for the study Akamai only takes into consideration data gathered from its Intelligent Platform.

Akamai’s definition of broadband internet on the other hand, is internet connections with speeds above 4 Mbps. In Q3 2014, India had 6.9% connections above the 4 Mbps threshold, a decrease from 7.2% last quarter. India remains the lowest ranked country in the region at 92. China, Vietnam and Philippines all did better with 34%, 8.8% and 6.9% of the connections being above 4 Mbps respectively.

High speed broadband adoption:

Akamai defines broadband connections with speeds over 10 Mbps as high-speed broadband. The adoption of high speed broadband in India decreased from 1.2% to 1.1% MoM with a YoY change of 153%. The country ranked 63rd internationally, although other south asian countries like Vietnam (0.3%) and Philippines (0.7%) remained below it.

In South Korea, 81% of the internet connections were above the 10 Mbps mark, while 96% were above the 4 Mbps mark. Japan and Hong Kong also had an impressive adoption rate with 55% of the connections in each country above 10 Mbps, and 87% and 89% above 4 Mbps respectively.

Attack traffic:

India has raised its ranking further now standing in the 4th place up from 5th last quarter, while China continues to be the biggest source of attack traffic internationally with 49%, up from 43%. United States with 17% and Taiwan with 3.8% ranked third and fourth respectively. Other notable sources of attackers include Russia (2.1%), Indonesia (1.9), Brazil (1.9), South Korea (1.4), Turkey (1.3) and Venezuela (1.2) among others.

Telnet (port 23) was the most targeted port internationally with 12% of the attacks, followed by Microsoft-DS (port 445) with 8.1% and HTTP (port 80) with 4.6%. Other protocols targeted include MS SQL Server, MS Terminal Services, HTTP alternate (port 8080) and SSH among others.

Enterprises faced the highest number of attacks at 39%, followed by commerce at 24%, media and entertainment at 16%, high tech at 13% and the public sector at 8%. According to the report, the third quarter of 2014 was dominated by attacks using the Shellshock vulnerabilities and targeted web sites critical to the coverage of the World Cup.

4k readiness:

There is a growing demand for 4K (Ultra HD) video content globally. According to Akamai, 10-20 Mbps bandwidth is the minimum speed required for seamless streaming of 4K videos. The 4K readiness metric tries to determine which countries or regions already have that capability.

South Korea ranked first by this metric, with 66% 4K readiness, followed by Hong Kong and Japan at 37% and 33% respectively. In India the 4k readiness increased 165% YoY and stood at 0.5%.

Page load times:

In Q3 2014, it took an average of 4840 milliseconds in India, down from 6069 last quarter, while it took 6772 ms in the case of mobile internet, down from 9601 ms last quarter. The ping times seem to have improved since the last quarter, however the ping times had significantly increased the last quarter compared to 5563 ms in Q1 2014 and 5134 ms in Q4 2013.

Download Q3 2014 Report (pdf)

Also Read:

Updated: Average Internet speed in India is 2 Mbps; Still the slowest in Asia-Pacific: Akamai

India continues to have the lowest Average Internet speeds in Asia Pacific: Akamai

India has the slowest high-speed broadband adoption internationally: Akamai