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SA's broadband dawdles

Bonnie Tubbs
By Bonnie Tubbs, ITWeb telecoms editor.
Johannesburg, 13 Sept 2012

SA's average broadband speed still dawdles relative to global standards, seeing a marginal improvement over the past six months.

This is according to the latest Net Index Household Download Index, an aggregation of results garnered from millions of test results from Speedtest.net by broadband testing diagnostics company Ookla. The company's report compares consumer broadband speeds from around the world.

The latest results, obtained from test data between 13 August and 11 September, show SA has an average download speed of 3.15Mbps - a slight improvement on the 2.97Mbps average reported about six months ago, in March.

SA's rank on a global scale remains low - at 115 out of the 178 countries tabled. Topping the list is Honk Kong, with an average download speed of 41.6Mbps - and on the other side of the spectrum, with an average of 0.94Mbps, sits the North-West African country of C^ote d'Ivoire.

Alan Levin, chairman of Internet Society SA, previously said SA's speed dearth could be attributed to Telkom's monopoly in the fixed-line space, as well as what he referred to as government's inability to prioritise internationally competitive broadband infrastructure.

African perspective

SA's speed is superseded by the African countries of Kenya (4.57Mbps), Namibia (4.08Mbps), Ghana (4Mbps) and, only just, by Zimbabwe (3.27Mbps).

Inferior to SA in terms of download speed in Africa is a longer list, which includes Nigeria (2.69Mbps), Tanzania (2.64Mbps), Angola (2.49Mbps), Uganda (2.17Mbps), Mozambique (1.98Mbps), Lesotho (1.9Mbps), Botswana (1.65Mbps), Malawi (1.28Mbps), Zambia (1.23Mbps), Egypt (1.12Mbps) and Algeria (1.08Mbps).

Results for SA were obtained from 1 508 880 unique IPs. Of the 4 834 305 total tests done, 431 209 were used by Ookla for the current index.

SA's suburbs

The values of the Household Download Index for SA, by area, are the rolling mean throughput in Mbps over the past 30 days, where the mean distance between the client and the server is less than 483km.

The sectioned report reveals that Internet users in Midrand are most privileged, with download speeds of up to 7.51Mbps. Johannesburg's average is 3.79Mbps, Pretoria's matches the country average at 3.15Mbps, Cape Town falls behind the other main metropolitans at 2.84Mbps, and SA's judicial capital, Bloemfontein, offers an average speed of 2.49Mbps.

Included in the top 10 suburbs in terms of download speeds are Johannesburg's Midrand, Sandton, Fietas, Edenvale, Bryanston and Krugersdorp; the Cape's Paarl and Parow, and Kloof and Kingsmead in the Durban area.

Internet implications

A recent World Bank report on broadband in developing countries reveals that every 10% increase in broadband connection boosts economic growth by 1.38%.

World Wide Worx's recent Internet Economic Impact Study - commissioned by Google SA - found the local Internet economy currently contributes R59 billion (2%) to the country's total GDP.

This is based on all expenditure by consumers, small and medium enterprises and government on products and services via the Internet, as well as on Internet access and infrastructure.

Arthur Goldstuck, World Wide Worx MD, says the largest contributor, however, is not the investment by service providers in infrastructure - but rather the amount spent on acquiring Internet access.

“While the mobile networks and fibre providers have certainly spent their fair share on infrastructure - a total of R13.5 billion - this pales beside the R29.2 billion spent on Internet presence and access.”

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