India's avg Internet speed likely to jump to 1.8Mbps in a yr

The average Internet speed in India is likely to jump by over 40% to 1.8 Mbps in the next 12 months on the back of investments in high-speed fibre network and affordable data plans, cloud computing firm Akamai Technologies said in a report.

In the first quarter of 2013, India saw an average connection speed of 1.3 Mbps (megabytes per second).

"Based on current industry growth trends, we expect a 40% to 50% increase in connection speed over the next 12 months.

This translates to anything between 1.7 to 1.8 Mbps," Akamai Technologies Director of Products for Asia Pacific and Japan Bruno Goveas said.

The country witnessed an average speed 1.0 Mbps in the first quarter of 2012. "Thus, there has been a 0.3 Mbps increase over the last one year," Goveas added.

The global average connection speed continued to grow in the first quarter of 2013, increasing 4% to 3.1 Mbps, said Akamai Technologies' State of the Internet report.

Goveas said connection speeds to the last mile (at home) have increased in the recent months, given the investments by telcos, cable operators and service providers in laying high-speed fiber direct to homes and apartments and offering high connection speed data plans, especially in urban areas.

"Many users now get online via mobile phones. High speed data plans are very affordable with some innovative data plan offerings from service providers. Hence, we expect to see a rise is high speed connections," Goveas added.

Corporates are upgrading their bandwidth speeds to keep up with their growth and demand and it also helps that bandwidth is getting cheaper, it added.

"We expect growth in speeds from users in Tier II and Tier III cities as well, and not just Tier I, given the investments from telcos, and with users accessing the Internet from mobile phones," Goveas said.