New Delhi, Feb 22 (IANS) Broadband India Forum (BIF) on Wednesday hailed the government's step to raise the minimum speed of broadband to 2Mbps from 512Kbps, which is a 400 per cent increase. However, it stressed that this is not enough for a 'mobile first' country.

The Forum said that it is unfortunate that as many as 45,180 villages in India do not have any 4G coverage at all.

"While this upgradation in minimum broadband speed is indeed a big milestone, India still has a long way to go to catch up with major regimes like the US where the regulator (FCC) has already prescribed a minimum broadband speed of 25Mbps," said the BIF.

Even Bangladesh has prescribed a higher minimum broadband speed of 5Mbps.

Still, the move will help in lifting the overall quantum of per capita data consumption and improve the service experience.

Being a 'mobile first' country, India heavily relies on mobile broadband with almost 98 per cent of the broadband users accessing it via their mobile phones.

"2Mbps may not sound good enough for the modern broadband era as one would need much higher speeds for satisfactory experience in applications viz. telecommuting, file downloading, video conferencing, streaming video - both SD & HD," said TV Ramachandran, President, BIF.

Nevertheless, "this strong nudge provided by the government will definitely help ensure improved consumer experience and consumer satisfaction," Ramachandran added.

The move will particularly benefit consumers in rural areas, suburban areas and fringes of metros who are heavy video consumers and rely more on video and data-rich apps.

"Studies have shown that for experiencing good quality of video streaming one needs to have download speeds much in excess of even 5Mbps and probably nearer values of 14Mbps or 15Mbps," said the BIF.

New Delhi: As 5G roll-out picks up speed thanks to Reliance Jio and Airtel, India climbed 10 spots for median mobile speeds globally in the month of January, from 79th position in December to 69th, a report said on Monday.

The country also increased two spots in rank globally for overall median fixed broadband speeds, from 81st in December to 79th in January, according to network intelligence and connectivity insights provider Ookla.

Overall fixed median download speeds in India saw a slight increase from 49.14 Mbps in December to 50.02 Mbps in January.

In November, India ranked at 105th position, globally in median mobile speeds.

Ookla also recorded 29.85 Mbps median mobile download speeds in January this year which is better than 25.29 Mbps in December 2022.

The UAE leads the chart for overall global median mobile speeds, whereas Papua New Guinea increased 24 spots in rank globally.

For fixed broadband download speeds, Singapore is consistent at the top spot while Cyprus increased 20 spots in rank globally.

Meanwhile, Reliance Jio's True 5G services have gone live in more than 236 cities, becoming the first and only telecom operator to reach such a wide network in a short span of time.

Jio True 5G has a three-fold advantage -- stand-alone 5G architecture with advanced 5G network with zero dependency on 4G network; the largest and best mix of 5G spectrum across 700 MHz, 3500 MHz, and 26 GHz bands; and seamlessly combining these 5G frequencies into a single robust "data highway" using an advanced technology called Carrier Aggregation.

(IANS)

New Delhi: Average data consumption per user in India reached 19.5GB per user a month in 2022, which is equivalent to 6,600 songs, a report showed on Thursday.

Mobile data traffic in India jumped 3.2 times in the last five years, reaching over 14 exabytes per month, according to Nokia's annual Mobile Broadband Index (MBiT) report. The report revealed that pan-India mobile data usage per month grew from 4.5 exabytes in 2018 to 14.4 exabytes in 2022. Together, 4G and 5G subscribers now account for almost 100 per cent of the total mobile data traffic in the country.

"India has seen a massive uptake of mobile broadband based on successful deployment of 4G LTE networks. We believe that 5G will take mobile broadband consumption to the next level in India by enabling new digital use cases for both consumer and enterprise segments," said Sanjay Malik, SVP and Head of India Market at Nokia.

At an aggregate level, total mobile data consumed in India is expected to more than double by 2024. Over 70 million 5G devices are estimated to have been shipped to India in 2022, indicating a strong traction for 5G in the market.

According to the report, enterprise spending on private 5G networks will be driven by new use cases in diverse industry verticals, including manufacturing, utilities, transportation and healthcare, among others in India. The country's investment in private wireless networks is expected to reach around $250 million by 2027.

"It is essential that this growth is managed in a sustainable manner while supporting India's aim to become a trillion-dollar digital economy," Malik added.

(IANS)

Bought for $30 mn, Internet's most expensive domain gets just 88K monthly visitors

New Delhi : Call it bizarre but the most expensive domain ever on Web, that was bought for $30 million, receives only 88,800 visitors per month while the third costliest Internet domain name has no registered monthly traffic, a report showed on Wednesday.

The voice.com website describes Voice as "a team of technologists, artists and curators using the transformative power of NFTs to make digital art collectable". The company bought the domain name in June 2019 from enterprise analytics and software company MicroStrategy but the $30 million investment doesn't appear to have delivered much return so far.

Voice.com's monthly traffic according to SimilarWeb currently stands at around 88,800, according to data by web-hosting provider Hostinger. "It's fascinating to see how much money has exchanged hands for specific domain names - the cost of the seven names in the list adds up to more than $100 million," said a Hostinger spokesperson.

For multi-billion-dollar companies, the outlay is relatively small, especially if it secures your presence on the web, strengthens your brand and provides a good stream of traffic to your site. "However as this study shows, spending millions of dollars on the domain name doesn't guarantee millions of website visitors," the spokesperson added.

360.com belongs to the Chinese internet security company 360 Security Technology Inc, and currently receives 23.9 million monthly visitors, which ranks it as the 154th biggest website in China. The domain name was bought from Vodafone in February 2015 for $17 million.

At third place, NFTs.com is one of the most recent sales in the top 10, after it was purchased in August 2022 for $15 million. The site currently contains very little information, but says it is "powered by DigitalArtists.com Marketplace".

Despite the large price tag, there isn't enough info for SimilarWeb to estimate its traffic, indicating that very few people are visiting the site. Sex.com domain name was sold for $13 million in November 2010 from Escom to Clover Holdings after it won an auction.

"The provocative name receives more traffic than the rest of the top five sites combined, with 64 million visitors each month, and it was recently announced that the name is on sale once more, with minimum bids of $20 million," the report said.

Describing itself as "Your #1 source for financial information", Fund.com was reportedly sold for $12 million in 2008, although some are skeptical of the figure. It has since been sold again in 2019, and currently sees around 293,000 monthly visitors.

At the sixth place, Hotels.com is the oldest sale to make the list, and when adjusted for inflation, the $11 million paid for Hotels.com in 2001 is around $18.4 million in 2023. The site receives the second-most monthly traffic in the list, with around 44.5 million visitors, said the report.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that it took 10 years to buy the Tesla.com domain name (at the seventh place on the list), eventually securing it from Silicon Valley engineer Stuart Grossman for around $11 million.

Today the site receives nearly 17 million monthly visitors, and the company's market cap is around $630 billion.

(IANS)