Chennai grabs top spot in fixed broadband speed in India, Delhi ranked fifth: Ookla report

When it comes to internet speed in India, the south seems to have won the trophy. Ookla, the company behind Speedtest, has ranked Chennai on the top spot in terms of the fastest fixed broadband speeds among the 20 largest cities in the country. Chennai's download speed of over 32.67 Mbps for fixed broadband is 57.7 per cent faster than the rest of the country's average. In December, Ookla had ranked India on 109th spot in a list of 122 countries for mobile internet speed.

The analysis, 'India's Digital Divide: How Broadband Speed Splits the Nation', is based on February data from real consumer-initiated tests taken using Speedtest. Besides Chennai, the fixed broadband speeds of some other metros like Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Visakhapatnam are also ranked higher than the country's average of 20.72 Mbps.

Bengaluru, which follows Chennai in the fixed broadband speed, reported an average speed of 27.2 Mbps, while Delhi was ranked on fifth spot with an average speed of 18.16 Mbps. Mumbai was ranked the lowest among the four big metros with an overall ranking of 8 and the fixed broadband speed averaging 12.06 Mbps.

As of February 2018, India was ranked 67th in the world in terms of download speed over fixed broadband based on the Speedtest Global Index, with an average speed of 20.72 Mbps. The ranking is an improvement from January, when the country came on the 65th position.
Ookla in December 2017 had said that India reported most improvement in fixed broadband download speeds among the world's most populous countries.  

On the states' front, the residents of Karnataka enjoy the fastest speeds in India, with a mean download speed of 28.46 Mbps, which is 37.4 per cent faster than the rest of the country. Tamil Nadu is a close second at 27.94 Mbps. Mizoram is the slowest with a mean download speed of 3.62 Mbps in February, which is 82.5 per cent slower than the rest of India.

Slowest cities in internet speed

Patna is by far the slowest city compared to the rest of the country, with speeds averaging 62.4 per cent, which is slower than the country's average. Besides Patna, download speeds in Kanpur, Lucknow, Pune, and Nagpur are significantly lower than that of their respective states.

As per the report, South India occupies four of the five top spots on the list of states and Union Territories with the fastest broadband download speeds in India, and North India holds four of the top 10.