BD backpedals on mobile internet while neighbours advance fast

While the world mobile-download speed increased over 30 per cent in 2017, Bangladesh backpedaled more than 7 per cent to stand ahead of only two war-torn countries, reveals a survey.
Pakistan, meanwhile, has seen its mobile-download speed shoot up by 56.2 per cent during the same period, while In India, it increased by 42.4 percent, says the survey report of Speedtest.
The research also found Bangladesh currently having an average download speed of 4.97 megabytes per second-less than one-fourth of the global average of 20.28 Mbps.
With such low download speed, Bangladesh currently stands 120th out of 122 countries in the latest Speedtest index. Only two countries, namely Iraq and Libya-both ravaged by wars in the Middle East-are placed behind Bangladesh on the information superhighway via mobile internet.
With a 7.4 percent decrease in mobile-download speed, Bangladesh is also one of the top 10 countries with the smallest improvement in mobile-download speed in 2017.
Laos, on the other hand, has seen its download speed going up meteorically, by 249.5 per cent, during the same period-the highest for any country in the Speedtest rankings.
Neighboring Vietnam, on the other hand, has increased its mobile download by 188.7 per cent.
When it comes to broadband, however, Bangladesh is better placed in the Speedtest index with a ranking of 85 among 133 countries. Its average download speed for broadband has increased by 13.7 per cent in last one year.
However, the country's average download speed of 16.14 Mbps for broadband is still far lower than the global average of 40.11 Mbps.
The Speedtest report comes out at a time when Bangladesh is witnessing a relative boom in the usage of mobile internet while the country is also preparing to launch its 4G service by early 2018.
The number of internet users in the country just crossed 80-million mark back in November this year-meaning that almost half the country's population has access to the internet.
The speed of internet, be it mobile or broadband, however, remains a major concern for the industry-insiders as well as general consumers alike.
IT-industry leaders have often noted that the quality of internet service is critical to the growth of ICT sector, especially given that Bangladesh is targeting to bring its annual IT export to US$5.0 billion by 2021.
Telecom industry-insiders, on the other hand, often cited high taxation and inadequate spectrum allocation as major hindrance to further growth of mobile internet in the country.
With an average download speed of 62.66 Mbps, Norway sits at the top of the Speedtest mobile-internet rankings while Singapore ranks first in the fixed broadband category with an average speed of 153.85 Mbps.
Founded in 2006 and based in Seattle, Washington, Speedtest.net is a web service that provides free analysis of Internet-access-performance metrics, such as connection-data rate and latency.
Speedtest Global Index is an interactive ranking of world internet speeds for both mobile and fixed broadband. To be included in the ranking, a country must have a minimum of 670 unique user-speed tests for mobile and 3,333 tests for fixed broadband each month.
Currently, there are 122 countries listed in the rankings for mobile and 133 for fixed broadband. .

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