VietNamNet Bridge – A report of Akamai said the average Internet speed in Vietnam has decreased by 21 percent in comparison with 2011. Meanwhile, some experts believe that Internet firms, which have been trying to optimize the use of broadband, have caused influences to Akamai’s measurement.

Akamai says Internet speed down, Speedtest says up

The Q3 2012 report on the Internet speed of Akamai, a US network providing Internet content, showed that the average Internet speed in Vietnam is 1.3Mbps, ranking the 49th out of the 54th surveyed countries, which is far below the average 2.8 Mbps level in the world.

The report was made after surveying 4.7 million IP addresses from Vietnam. 5.07 percent of them had the Internet connection speed lower than 256 Kbps, 1.17 percent over 4 Mbps, and only 0.03 percent over 10 Mbps.

If comparing with the other 12 surveyed regional countries, Vietnam ranks above only India (1.0 Mbps) and Indonesia (1.2 Mbps).

Akamai’s Q4 report showed that the average Internet speed in Vietnam was 1.664 Mbps. Meanwhile, the 2010 report said the average speed was 1.7 Mbps. As such, Vietnam’s average Internet speed decreased by 21 percent in 2012 over 2011 and 30 percent over 2010.

Meanwhile, according to NetIndex, the website which shows statistics based on the measurement by Speedtest.net, the download speed in Vietnam from January 26, 2013 to February 24, 2013 was 9.90 Mbps, ranking the 55th among 180 countries in the world, while the upload speed 7.38 Mbps, ranking the 27th out of 180 countries.

The results have been found after considering 1.2 million IP addresses in Vietnam. As such, if comparing with May 2013, the download speed on Speedtest has increased from 8.04 Mbps to 9.90 Mbps.

According to VNNIC, in November 2012, the average speed for every of 31.3 million Internet service users has increased by 0.002 Mbps in comparison with 2011.

However, some analysts say the figure is unreliable, because only ISPs know exactly about their actual numbers of subscribers.

Amakai’s results don’t truly reflect the real situation in Vietnam?

The representatives of Internet service providers ISP all have affirmed that in 2012, they increased the international bandwidth to better satisfy the requirements of users.

The Vietnam Post and Telecommunication Group (VNPT), for example, now has the 160 Gbps international bandwidth, which is expected to increase to 270 Gbps by 2015 and 500 Gbps by 2020.

Meanwhile, in 2012, FPT Telecom upgraded its committed international bandwidth for all FTTH service packages to have the minimum Internet access speed of between 1,152 Kbps and 3.072 Kbps. CMC Telecom has also increased the international bandwidth by two folds since December 2012.

An Internet expert has noted that the basic services such as news, music, have been provided by Vietnamese companies, therefore, the demand for international access has decreased significantly.

Explaining the results reported by Akamai, the expert said that the problem may be in the measurement method. With the method, when the number of new Internet subscribers increases, the average speed would decrease.

“In Vietnam, since the new subscribers increase rapidly, but they rarely have international access, the average bandwidth measured by Akamai has been decreasing,” he said.

If so, the report of Akamai is just for reference, while it does not truly reflect the real situation in Vietnam, the expert concluded.

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