Naina Khedekar

The new State of the Internet report for Q3 2013 has been released by Akamai and it makes for very bad reading if you are an Indian. While the global average connection speeds have risen 29 percent year-over-year to 3.6Mbps in Q3 2013, the average connection speed in India is just 1.4 Mbps. That by the way is the lowest average connection speed recorded by Akamai in its survery for the Asia Pacific region. This is despite an 11% quarterly increase in the average connection speed.

The same goes for the average peak connection; India’s 9 Mbps average peak connection speed was the lowest in the region and also saw a 15 percent quarterly decline. Akamai’s July 2013 report had predicted that India’s average connection speed will jump by over 40 percent to 1.8 Mbps in the next 12 months on the back of investments in high-speed fibre network and affordable data plans. But the real number is far lower than that expectation.

Akamai has listed 123 countries/regions that are experiencing an increase in average connection speeds year-over-year. For instance the increase is 0.5 percent in Namibia (to 1.1 Mbps) and a massive 76 percent increase in Nepal (to 3.6 Mbps). Among the nations, there are 18 nations that saw a quarter-over-quarter decline. The losses range from 0.4 percent in Bahrain (to 2.2 Mbps) to a drop of 19 percent in El Salvador (to 1.9 Mbps).

“In the third quarter of 2013, we observed that long-term growth in average and average peak connection speeds remained strong, as did growth in global broadband and high broadband adoption rates,” David Belson, the report’s editor, said in a statement. “We believe these trends point to continued improvement in the quality and performance of Internet connectivity in countries around the world.”

The report further claims that global broadband adoption (rated at speeds of 4Mbp), increased by 5.8 percent last quarter and global high broadband (rated as 10 Mbps) witnessed 19 percent increase over the previous quarter. According to the survey, the mobile data traffic has increased by 80 percent in the last year. Akamai cites data collected by Ericsson that has disclosed a voluminous mobile data traffic jump by 80 percent year-over-year. In Q3 2013, average connection speeds on mobile network operators were ranging between 0.6 Mbps and went as high as 9.5 Mbps.