If happiness could be measured on internet speed, India would be the least happy country. According to OpenSignal, India has the slowest 4G Download speed in the world. Mobile analytics company OpenSignal has prepared a list of countries on the basis of 4G download speed and India ranks lowest. The surprising element is that India ranks behind Kazakhstan, Pakistan and even Tunisia.

Despite the emphasis on going digital and mobile data companies promising and advertising ‘high data speed’, the download facility with 4G still remains slowest and lags behind other countries.

The question then to ask is, why does India rank last on the list? One obvious answer is that though 4G is now available throughout India, companies have failed to keep up with the growing demand of consumers and have inadequate network volume and capacity.

The countries that have top 4G speed according to OpenSignal are Singapore, Netherlands, Norway, South Korea and Hungary. Internet users in Singapore get the fastest downloads on 4G (44 mbps), followed by the Netherlands (42 mbps). In Norway, the 4G download speed stands at 41 mbps, while South Korea records 40 mbps. Compared to this, India’s 4G download speed is meagre 6.07 mbps. The other countries with slowest download speed other than India are Algeria, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand.

OpenSignal analysed more than 5,000 crore measurements for three months- the samples were collected between October 1 and December 29, 2017 and analysed speed from over 38 lakh smartphone and tablet users across six continents.

When Reliance launched Jio in India and after the sensational Mukesh Ambani speech at the launch where he declared so called 4G freebies in India, other service providers were forced into coming up with 4G plans for subscribers too. The OpenSignal puts light on the fact that 4G speeds in India have not really improved from the 3G speed.

As of now it can be concluded that India still has a long way to go when it comes to internet speed and connectivity. The challenges are enormous considering the population, volume of net users and having adequate infrastructure, but for a country eying to be a superpower, getting rid of super slow internet speed must be a priority.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Feb 23, 2018 03:15 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).