Giving a push to its Digital India campaign, the government has not started proceeding towards its plan to increase the minimum internet speed in the country by four times. Currently, the minimum internet speed offered to the customers is 512 kbps, which is set to increase to 2 Mbps if the latest plan of the government comes into action.
Aruna Sundararajan, telecom secretary has said that the union government is aware of the need to have high-speed internet and that the government is taking right steps towards increasing the minimum internet speed. She also stated that a number of areas within the country do not have access to high-speed internet and that is one of the biggest barriers in promoting initiatives like digital India, under which, the government expects everyone to get connected for sharing of information and for availing of various facilities. She also stated that the telecom companies promise very high-speed internet under their 3G and 4G technology, however, the ground reality shows a completely different scenario.
According to her, the country is preparing for the rollout of 5G and a large number of people are still without a decent speed of the internet. She added that for a successful implementation of initiatives like Skill India, Smart Cities, Digital India and Startup India, there is a need to spread high-speed internet speed across the nation. Increasing the minimum speed does not mean that the whole country will have 2Mbps speed, however, this is the minimum that needs to be offered by the telecom companies and ISPs.
A number of government initiatives need the individuals to enrol online and access the information online. The information usually comes in form of videos and slow internet speed becomes the biggest roadblock in a seamless experience. The country has seen a big transformation in the mobile internet scenario post the launch of Reliance Jio, however, there is still a lot to be done.
Cable.co.uk had recently conducted a global speed test at over 63 million internet locations in 189 countries. The task included downloading a 7.5GB HD movie. Out of the 189 countries, India ranked at 119th position. The download of that particular video file took just 18 minutes 34 seconds in Singapore, ranked 1st. Other countries including Sweden and Taiwan could download the movie in less than 30 minutes too. However, Indian internet connection took a whopping 8 hours and 16 minutes.