Global Broadband Quality Study-Indian Broadband sucks!

It's not like we needed convincing, but India is one of the crappiest places in terms of broadband quality. When Google Docs seems like a heavy RIA, you have to know something is wrong!

Now in a Global Broadband Quality Study by University of Oxford, India has ranked 62 of 66 total entries. Since such comparisons traditionally call for a comparison with our infamous neighbours, no, we didn't beat Pakistan, who are snug at 60. We still managed to beat Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Indonesia though, if that even means anything.

To add insult to injury to injury, the report made a few more correlations:
"The research team found that broadband quality is linked to a nation’s advancement as a knowledge economy and countries with broadband on their national agenda had the highest broadband quality."

Ouch! Is it really that bad? For one, I'd rather have a slow less stable but free access internet right here in India, that a censored, and slightly faster Internet access in Pakistan!

And China is at 49! What gives? What use is a hyper-fast 4MBPS internet connection, if all you see are images of kittens?

The study maintains that the in the current scenario, with Social Networking, low definition video streaming, video chatting, and file sharing, the requirement is for a 3.75MBPS download / 1MBPS upload connection, with a latency of 95ms! Their envisioned future scenerio for the coming decade of HD streaming and visual networking would require a 11.25 MBPS download / 5MBPS upload connection with 60ms latency! We are far, far away from even today's requirements by these standards!

By these standards they have Korea, Japan, Sweden, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Denmark, and Romania, in the "Ready for Tomorrow Zone" with India all the way back in the "Leapfrog oppurtunity" area, behind "Comfortably enjoying today's applications", "Meeting needs of today's applications" and "Below today's applications" areas.

Overall, India could surely do worse, though we hope it does much better next time.

Source: Saïd Business School, University of Oxford Website