While the overall Internet connectivity speed in the country is on the decline (average speed of 256 kbps or less) even as broadband penetration grows, Bharti Airtel is set to put Internet connectivity on the fast track.

In a landmark move, the company is set to significantly scale up the broadband speed to 4 Mbps in top metros. Also, from 512 kbps of start-up speed, Airtel will now scale up its broadband speed to 2 Mbps in top cities and 1Mbps in rest of the country for its 1.4 million broadband users and that too at a better value proposition.

?Earlier, all our plans started with the ?K’ word (kilo bytes). Now it will start with ?M? (mega byte). Earlier, we offered 512 kbps speed for R599-a-month, now 2 Mbps will be offered at R649. The aim is to provide our customers an enhanced broadband experience. Between April 2010 and May 2011, our downloads have gone up 20% while the speed went up 40%. This move will further push the equation,? Girish Mehta, chief marketing officer, Telemedia Services, Bharti Airtel told FE.

Bharti will launch its high-speed broadband plans on Monday. The company also plans to cap the consumer bill at R1,999 per month irrespective of the monthly usage.

This means, Airtel customers can significantly scale up downloads but their monthly bills will not exceed R1,999. ?Our customers are enjoying much richer content across a variety of genres be it Encyclopaedia Britannica, Learn Next, Broadband TV, Airtel Photos or Airtel Movies. Our aim is to aid the uptake of value added services enabling customers do get more out of their broadband connection,? Mehta said.

The move comes on the back of the latest report by Akamai, a firm that runs a globally-distributed network of servers.

It said in India, the average Internet speed declined 9.1% in 2010 among the 12 Asia-Pacific countries. Also, India was the only country to see the fall in Internet speed last year. South Korea leads the pack with the maximum speed of 13.7 Mbps followed by Hong Kong (9.4 Mbps), Japan (8.3 Mbps) and Taiwan (4.8 bps).

Even China had an average speed of 1 Mbps in 2010 while India clocked an average speed of 800 Kbps.

?Though online research appears to indicate that the Indian government considers connections above 256 Kbps to be broadband, the continued growth in the percentage of connections below that threshold (2mbps) should be of some concern,? the report noted. In India, Akamai found that over 35% Internet connections had a speed of 256kbps or less in 2010.

Even on the high broadband adoption metric, the Akamai report suggests that India had the most significant decline, losing 24% from the end of 2009.

And this was corroborated by the growth of narrow band adoption in India which grew 29% just behind South Korea. Narrow band means Internet connections with speeds below 256 Kbps.