Mobile Internet Speed Improves

The country has made an improvement in mobile internet speed with four notches up from 105 to 101 among 146 countries in December 2023. The US-based Ookla Speed Test Global Index has recently revealed the information.

According to the data, the country's mobile internet download speed was 23.87 Mbps, upload speed was 10.82 Mbps and latency was 25 ms (milliseconds) in December. However, in December 2022, Bangladesh was ranked 121st in Ookla Speed Test. The ranking has improved by 20 places in a span of one year.

Bangladesh is behind from neighbouring countries India and the Maldives in the recently-published list for December. The two countries are ranked 22nd and 30th respectively. And the United Arab Emirates tops the list. The download speed of the country is 303.21 Mbps and upload speed is 28.38 Mbps.

Speed test Intelligence also reveals that among top mobile operators in Bangladesh in Q4 2023, Banglalink delivered the fastest median download speed at 26.74 Mbps, followed by Robi, Grameen Phone and Teletalk.

The mobile multi-server latency results in Q4 2023 of Ookla showed that among top providers, Banglalink registered the lowest median multi-server latency in Bangladesh at 33ms. In measuring the consistency of each operator's performance, Ookla found that Banglalink had the highest consistency in Bangladesh during Q4 2023, with 89 per cent of results showing at least a 5Mbps minimum download speed and 1 Mbps minimum upload speed.

The total number of Bangladesh's internet subscribers reached 131 million at the end of December, 2023, including nearly 7 million new users, according to the recent BTRC data. The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) data showed that of the internet subscribers, some 118.49 million are mobile internet users and 12.88 million broadband internet users.

Meanwhile, with 10.61 million new mobile users in 2023, the number of subscribers in the South Asian country reached 190.81 million in December 2023. Bangladesh has currently four mobile companies in operation, three of them being foreign-backed cell phone operators.

The number of subscribers of mobile operators, Grameen Phone, Robi Axiata, Banglalink Digital Communications and Teletalk Bangladesh stood at 82.20 million, 58.67 million, 43.48 million and 6.46 million respectively at the end of December.

The country also awarded 16 companies to make phone handsets local factories.