Increasing exposure, expanding networks, and some good marketing campaigns by multinational telecom companies; internet penetration in Pakistan has seen a consistent rise. Telecom gurus have predicted that the advent of 3G and 4G will revolutionize mobile internet consumption in Pakistan.
According to a latest report published by Akamai, a Content Delivery Network (CDN) services provider, Pakistan’s average internet speed has soared by a mammoth figure of 150% in 2015. Some great news for the growth of telecom industry in the recent past.
Country’s average internet speed has surged to a level of 2.5 mbps during the first quarter of 2016 highlighting a jump of 193 percent when compared to the same period last year when the average internet speed was 1.6 mbps.
Pakistan: Some impediments in connectivity and coverage!
Although these figures look highly promising in the context greater internet coverage, wider service spectrum and better speed but Pakistan is still way behind from its actual potential. India on the other hand has also seen a significant jump in average internet speed rising from 2.2 mbps in 2015 to 3.465 mbps in the current year. Although both showed a rising trend but the quantum of growth in internet speed is higher for India. The void between the two countries expanded to 0.96 in 2015 when compared to 0.6 last year.
Pakistan is also struggling to provide wider accessibility of good quality internet connection as only a meager number of 4.8 percent users are fortunate to use 4 mbps broadband connections. However, when looking at the global picture of good quality internet the figure stands at 78 percent I.e. These lucky ones have access to premium quality internet services.
In context of world bank report, India has the largest offline population while Pakistan stands at the 4th position thus highlighting a mammoth untapped potential. Thus there is a huge room for telecom companies to gain market share.
Undoubtedly some of them have taken the first step to bridge this technology gap by bringing in 3G and 4G mobile internet which has improved accessibility and quality of internet services in Pakistan. Their efforts are shown in numbers where average mobile internet speed in the country has reached 3.4 mbps a bit higher than India which stands at 3.2 mmps during the same period.
Improving global picture: higher average speed!
Global numbers show an encouraging picture where average internet speed beefing up by 23 percent reaching 6.3 mbps during the first quarter of 2016 while the percentage of population having access to high quality internet has reached 8.5 percent.
Nevertheless, these numbers can be deceiving as global statistics are taken on averages which cannot show consistent results due to higher and lower outliers. For instance, due to major collateral damage and unstable security situation Syria has seen a drop of 23 percent reaching 1.4 mbps while Kenya on the other hand has seen a gigantic upsurge of 298 percent reaching 7.8 mbps. These are the results of swinging demographic changes on the global map. Western countries however have shown persistent results.
Some of the major reasons for lower average internet speed in Pakistan are limited number of mobile operators and minimal investment in fiber optic technology which is imperative for improving speed. Another strategy would be to expand the coverage of 3G and 4G network in smaller cities to expand penetration.
image credit: thehacktoday
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
