Can you imagine your life without the internet? I am sure your answer will be no. It is impossible to imagine life without the internet nowadays. The internet is day by day becoming a necessity for individuals. In this pandemic, the whole world is relying on the internet and connectivity.
Meetings and online classes are being successfully conducted only with the help of the internet. Every individual whether young or elder can be seen using the internet for a variety of purposes. India has a considerable number of internet users. But the thing is internet speed is not growing with the pace it should grow. Let us have a look at this part.
Ranking of India-
The country ranked a poor 126th out of 140 countries in mobile internet speed in June, falling three positions from the previous month. India’s mobile internet speed for downloads was 10.87 Mbps, against the global download average speed was 27.44 Mbps.
India was ranked at 111 with a download speed of 9.14 Mbps, so while the average speed has increased over the past year, other countries have managed to improve it by far more than India. Last year in July, India was ranked at 56 with a speed of 23.92 Mbps for mobile internet speeds, so on both counts, India has improved but not as much as other countries.
Reports by Ookla
The mobile and fixed broadband speeds in May were 11.02 Mbps and 30.03 Mbps, respectively. Interestingly, according to Ookla’s World’s Internet In 2019 report, fixed broadband internet services and mobile data services in India saw some improvement in 2019 when compared with 2018, but there may still be miles to go for the country before it ranks among the best in the world.
Doug Suttles, cofounder, and general manager at Ookla, said that India needs to focus on developing a sophisticated network infrastructure to fix the poor network quality and low connectivity speeds. Ookla highlighted factors such as the wide geography and large user base in India, which requires a well-laid-out network to handle high volumes of usage.
Cheap Cost
Besides the Indian government’s continuous impetus for internet penetration through the Digital India program, private sector initiatives such as Google Wi-Fi at 400 railway stations, Vodafone’s super Wifi coupled with the entry of Reliance Jio 4G services have drastically brought down the cost of internet subscription. This has been instrumental to the growth of internet users in India.’
Users in India-
In a recent report, Google estimated India to have 400 Mn active internet users and 350 Mn connected smartphone users. “On an average India adds 40 Mn internet users on a Y-o-Y basis, which is among the fastest in the world. An Indian subscriber now has an average 8GB per month mobile data usage which has reached levels of developed markets,” the report added.
According to telecom industry experts, the slow bandwidth speed in India is due to the high cost of spectrum leading to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) not investing much into the spectrum. The growing number of telecom users and smartphone users are also cited as one of the reasons for the slow speed in the country.
According to a telecom expert, “India has one of the costliest spectrums in the world. The internet service providers are already cash-strapped with cut-throat competition and low cost of the internet. In such a situation, the companies are not being able to invest in the buying spectrum and this coupled with the ever-growing internet users, where limited available bandwidth is being distributed among the increasing number of users, are the reasons the speed is slowing down.”
Considerable efforts are being carried out by several institutions and agencies to increase the speed of the internet. Reliance is also trying to introduce 5G in India. Thanks to Reliance Jio. Only after Jio came into the market, the internet has reached millions of houses in India at a reasonable price.
Though it must be kept in mind that the speed is not too low in India. One can easily carry out almost all the activities on the internet. So, let us hope that everyone uses the internet for the betterment of our country India and for productive reasons.
Written By- Vaibhav Sharma
Edited By - Kashish Chadha
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