Amid the Coronavirus outbreak, there was a dip in fixed broadband download speeds in the month of February in India, Ookla said in its latest report. The company behind Speedtest says that due to this decline, India has dropped three places on Ookla Speedtest Global Index. However, the speeds saw a slight increase in the month of March, said the report, which keeps the track of the impact of COVID-19 on the performance and quality of global mobile and fixed broadband internet networks.
As of February, the Speedtest Global Index ranks India 128th worldwide for mobile broadband performance, which is unchanged from January’s ranking, and 69th for fixed broadband speeds globally. The country witnessed a dip of 1.75 Mbps and a drop by three places in mean fixed broadband download speeds, while mean mobile download speeds remained flat.
When XiteTech talked to a few people in the areas of Ghaziabad, Noida, Gurugram and Delhi, they told us that they have been witnessing some issues with the internet speed since a few days. It is to be noted that these cities are now under lockdown. Not only in India, but this trend has been seen globally. According to a report by BroadbandNow, US cities like Houston, New York City, San Diego, and San Jose have also seen a decline in download speeds for home Internet users.
Meanwhile, China, from where the pandemic originated, also witnessed a decrease in download speeds. ‘In China we see a dip in fixed broadband performance, with a decrease in download speed and an increase in latency, both in Hubei province and at the country level starting the week of January 13, 2020. Fixed broadband performance has slowly eased back upward in the weeks since. Mobile performance dropped around the same time and while it is steadily improving in China overall, mobile download speed in Hubei continues to suffer,’ Ookla said.
According to the February Speedtest Global Index, China’s mean mobile download speeds declined from 68.3 Mbps in January to 57.26 Mbps in February. The overall rank of China has also dropped five places for mobile, from 6th to 11th worldwide between January and February. The February Speedtest Global Index ranks Singapore first in fixed broadband speeds with a mean download speed of 203.68 Mbps and South Korea first in mobile speeds with a mean download speed of 93.84 Mbps.
In the month of March, the fixed broadband download speed in India increased very slightly between the weeks of March 2 and March 9, while mobile download speed remained flat. When compared with other Asian countries, Ookla said that the internet speeds on both mobile and fixed networks in China took a dive during the outbreak of COVID-19 in the country.
