India has fallen 4 ranks in Ookla's speedtest global index for mobile speeds in August 2024. 5G has helped India climb the ranks pretty aggressively in this list over the last two years. From the 16th rank globally, India fell to the 20th rank in August 2024. This doesn't mean that India's mobile network performance is poorer than it was. It could mean that the other countries have done well and improved their median mobile speeds. For India, the median mobile download speed was 96.38 Mbps.
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Globally, the median mobile download speed was 55.80 Mbps. Thus India is doing quite better than the global average. The average speeds for Indian mobile users will improve as BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited) upgrades its networks to 4G and Vodafone Idea Limited (VIL) also rolls out 5G.
At the top of this list continues to be the UAE (United Arab Emirates). For UAE, the average download speed was 398.51 Mbps while for Qatar, which was in the second rank, the speed was 344.34 Mbps.
In the fixed broadband segment, India climbed two spots to reach the 84th rank. For fixed broadband, the average download speed in India was 63.79 Mbps. What's interesting here is that mobile speeds have become much better than fixed-broadband speeds in general. This is a major change India has witnessed as 5G has rolled out in most parts of the country.
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Reliance Jio has covered the entire country with 5G SA (standalone) while Bharti Airtel has covered it with 5G NSA (non-standalone). Both telcos are continuously improving the 5G coverage now and in the coming years should achieve blanket 5G coverage. At present, 5G is free for consumers in India. Telcos are not charging anything extra for 5G, but nothing can be said about what will happen in the future.
