Average fixed broadband speed in India have dropped by over 5Mbps since Jan: Report

Mobile and fixed broadband downloads speeds in India declined in the month, according to Ookla's March Speedtext Global Index. India also slipped two spots on fixed broadband speed and is now positioned at 71st globally in the category. On mobile speed index, India ranks 130.

Ookla reported mobile download speed in India declined from 11.83Mbps in February to 10.15Mbps in March. Download speeds on fixed broadband have decreased from 39.65 Mbps in February to 35.98 Mbps in March.

Ookla pointed out that the fixed broadband speed in India has been slowing down since the beginning of 2020. It said India had 41.48Mbps broadband speed in January. By March, speeds dropped by 5.5Mbps.

The network tracker pointed out that the telecommunication infrastructure is under immense pressure as millions of people in the country are staying indoors due to the Covid-19. The slowdown in the experience is also "natural", it added.

"When networks are under usage strain, like they are in this unprecedented time of lockdown in India due to COVID-19, it is natural that they experience some level of slowdown," said Doug Suttles, CEO of Ookla.

"It is important to note that while the internet itself should handle elevated usage, there may be impacts to speed as people continue to move their daily activities increasingly online. While the core of the internet remains stable, some ISP networks may struggle to keep up."

The report comes days after several OTT players including the likes of Hotstar, Netflix, and Google's YouTube decided to lower the streaming quality to reduce the stress on the telecom infrastructure in India. Facebook, Viacom18, MX Player, Zee, Tiktok, and Amazon Prime Video have also made similar changes.

"The digital industry has decided to act immediately in the larger national and consumer interest and to ensure the robustness of the cellular network," digital companies said in a joint statement.

"It was unanimously agreed that as an exceptional measure, all companies will immediately adopt measures, including temporarily defaulting HD and ultra-HD streaming to SD content or offering only SD content, at bitrates not higher than 480p on cellular networks."

Fixed broadband speeds are slow not just in India but at global level as well.

"We continue to see a degradation in monthly speeds for fixed broadband at a global level with mobile broadband showing its first month of decreased speeds in March 2020. More detail on specific locations is available using the buttons above. For context, the world average download speed for mobile was 30.47 Mbps and it was 74.64 Mbps for fixed broadband in March," it said on its website.