India Broadband: Where do we stand on a Global Internet Map?

These days, we all are talking about Internet speed in India. I am sure that once in every gathering of minimum of 2 friends, they talk about it and discuss where are we (India) lacking, who is offering what speed and at what prices, etc.

We talk, because we see some hope & scope of improvement to speed up our work, communication and entertainment with the use of Internet. We (at least me) feels ashamed when I had told my Internet speed Vs money I pay, to my friends abroad!

It is frustrating when ‘connection times out’ while you’re purchasing online, booking tickets, meeting people, video chatting with families abroad, uploading large files, grabbing knowledge from video tutorial and so on…
(And I did not mention playing multi-player games online here because we simply cannot do it in our bandwidth. )

I can go and have cup of coffee or smoke a cigarette or have a phone call to friends if  I am downloading or uploading heavy files! Because I cannot / should not do anything on the computer fearing that  connection may get interrupted if I browse or my computer may hang in between then I will have to re-start the whole process!

As we talk and wait (and only wait) for 3G launch in India – Where we stand on Global Internet map –  is not pleasing at all.

Here are few details which I obtained from speedtest.net. You can also check your internet speed on this site.
Listed as Rank > Country > Download speed

1.  Republic of Korea – 22.49 Mb/s
2.  Aland Islands –  18.87 Mb/s
3.  Latvia – 17.92 Mb/s
4.  Japan –  16.94 Mb/s
5.  Romania – 16.17 Mb/s
12. Hong Kong – 11.57 Mb/s
16. Germany – 9.58 Mb/s
24. Singapore –  8.32 Mb/s
25. France – 8.07 Mb/s
28. United States – 7.60 Mb/s
123. Srilanka – 1.49 Mb/s
127.India – 1.45 Mb/s

* This information is excluding tests done with connections used by Colleges and Corporations.

We stand way below at 127th with an average speed of 1.45 Mb/s with a hope to get somewhere within Top 50 countries.

If we look at some Broadband Plans on offer from various ISPs. The most noticing thing about these plans are, speed in ‘KB’s & cost in ‘K’s. It still feels like a luxury to have a faster Internet connection. 8mbps, 24mbps, 30mbps, 50mbps – these kind of numbers are only creating a buzz but nothing beyond it.

While the world is moving fast, moving heavy, getting  more HD – How are we going to catch up with them?

I would really appreciate if ISPs provide minimum of 1 MBps & 2 Mbps unlimited plans in current prices of 256 kbps & 512 kbps unlimited plans (not exceeding Rs. 1750/month with taxes) with almost zero downtime – I think this should be enough for now and would be a good stepping stone to tell other countries that yes, we’re coming!

I would really appreciate to know your view on this.

11 Comments

Nishant April 2, 2010

Lol, i still hardly get 200kbps of actual downloading speed. But i enjoy 1mbs of download speed at my office though.

stan July 10, 2010

I have 75mbpshere in Finland.iam from delhi.i hope delhi will get 3g soon.

Aditya Kane July 11, 2010

Yes I have heard Finland has plans to make 100 Mbps available to every househod in the future. That is truly awesome.

Rizvy April 3, 2010

Yeah ! you are right dude.We are only able to hope to have a better tomorrow.i think downloading speeds of around 500kb and uploading about 60-90 Kb is fine ( here in INDIA )

Rajeel April 3, 2010

But i’m sure the cost of internet and it’s speed will have a drastic change in the nearby future. Nowadays internet have became very commen in India, and most of all great bloggers and web developers are from india. It is one of the fastest growing industries and the cost’s will decrease as the private companies also take interest on ISP nowadays.

(web is so commen nowadays, no doubt, coz, Even The smallest stationary shop near my school has even got a very huge community in orkut)

tushonline April 3, 2010

True 🙂

Simran April 3, 2010

You are right, we get very less internet speed as compare to other countries. Limited plan users can get better speed but the speed in unlimited plans is nothing more than 30 kb/s

Chinmoy April 3, 2010

Broadband and Internet speed in India is #fail. Key people from the telecom world have said it themselves during the 3G debate. We have done great work but have failed in Internet. 3G will do us no good at the cueent price offerings.
Let us see a scenario. I pay ~Rs. 900 for unlimited internet through my Tata Photon, ~ 700 for wired BSNL broadband and Rs. 500 for Airtel mobile internet. Total amounting to Rs. 1500 and the speed is horrible, not to mention the downtimes and the limits and caps of 15 GB on the advertised as unlimited Tata Photon Whiz plan and 2.5 GB on the Airtel Rs. 500 plan.

Aditya Kane April 4, 2010

Change in most cases is very slow, I remember 7-8 years ago even experts were saying that high speed broadband would be great but not really used much by Indians. This has changed around completely.

tushonline April 5, 2010

Yes. situation is sad! Internet is lacking growth compared to mobile service! There are few clear things come to my mind
1] Govt is getting good revenue out of mobile phone services & not much from internet
2] ISPs are minting money! compared to the cost of equipments they had set-up, service cost is too high! (resident of US can get connection that is 6 times faster than ours whereas their ISPs did have higher set-up cost)
3] Govt is not prompt in providing enough permissions to the ISPs! Hence lot of cost went in setting up wired connections & under the table adjustments!
4]I know a company who ordered huge wireless equipments but since last 1 month they could not use it! This shows poor re-search and poor technical support staff!

Vishal January 29, 2011

Us is unbelievably behind too just a silver lightning for me 😀 i am from indai of course and not so proud of speed but i pretty much can do everyting i want to its enough for me at least now 512 kb/s.