SA’s neglect of access networks for providing broadband connectivity has resulted in the country slipping in a world quality broadband ranking study conducted by Oxford University with US networking company Cisco.

It’s the third study by the university, which shows SA ranked 42nd in the world and slipping almost 10 places in two years.

Reshaad Sha, director of strategy for Cisco’s Internet business solutions group, says that although several other African countries have shown significant development in the quality of their broadband access, SA has made no significant strides in the past two years.

Despite the influx of undersea capacity in the form of Seacom and the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy), Sha says “last-mile” access to customers has not improved much.

Though SA demonstrated a 10% improvement in its overall score compared to last year, the country lags many of its African peers, including Kenya and Ghana.

The study looked at several aspects of broadband quality across 72 countries and 239 cities. SA’s download speeds increased by 55% between the 2009 and 2010 studies, climbing from 1 003kbit/s to 1 557kbit/s on average.

Average latency (a measure of network response time) improved by 35%. In download and latency speeds SA compared favourably with global averages.

However, SA fares poorly when it comes to upload speeds. Average upload speeds declined by 13% over the past year, falling from 359kbit/s to 313kbit/s. The global average for upload speeds increased by 69%.

Sha says SA’s quality score was affected negatively because the majority of users access the Internet via mobile networks.

Overall global broadband quality increased by 48% since 2008. — Staff reporter, TechCentral