Nepal betters in internet download speed: Ookla

The internet infrastructure seems to be improving in the country with the increasing penetration rate.

The average download speed in Nepal was Nepal 5.06Mbps – among the 186 countries – ranking the country at 117^th position, whereas India has 4.18Mbps with 130th position, according to Ookla's Net Index that revealed that the average download speed in Nigeria was 5.14Mbps, Cambodia had 4.66Mbps, Laos had 4.73Mbps, Bhutan had 4.41Mbps, and Zimbabwe had 4.20Mbps.

Hong Kong – that secured the first position – has 71.22Mbps, Singapore at 52.75Mbps, Romania at 50.26Mbps, South Korea at 47.20Mbps and Sweden at 42.35Mbps in terms of download speeds, it revealed. "The US ranked 31 with an average download speed of 20.74Mbps, while the global average was 16.20Mbps."

Afghanistan, Malawi, Cuba, Benin and Gambia are at the bottom with average download speeds of 1.13Mbps, 1.16Mbps, 1.21Mbps, 1.36Mbps and 1.46Mbps, respectively.

However, in terms of upload speeds, Nepal's position was at 85^th position with an average upload speed of 3.34Mbps.

Likewsie, Hong Kong posted the highest average upload speed at 58.99Mbps, followed by South Korea at 40.06Mbps, Singapore at 37.14Mbps, Macau at 36.48Mbps and Andorra at 35.98Mbps.

According to Ookla – the company that offers Speedtest.net and its mobile apps that help in comparing and ranking consumer download speeds around the globe – the data is based on over 1.5 billion records.

The results are based on millions of recent test results from Speedtest.net," the company claimed, adding that the value is the rolling mean throughput in Mbps over the past 30 days where the mean distance between the client and the server is less than 300 miles.

Nepal's internet user base has grown to 7.20 million in mid-September, up from 7.14 million in mid-August, according to Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) that has revealed that the internet penetration rate stood at 27.18 per cent, up from 26.93 per cent a month earlier.