The average measured speed of Internet connections in South Africa has improved by 16% in the past year, new research from Akamai suggests. However, the country is placed a dismal 80th worldwide, well behind top-ranked countries such as Korea and Japan.
According to Akamai’s latest State of the Internet Report, for the first quarter of 2013, South Africa fares even worse, coming in at 126th worldwide, for average peak connection speeds. The data excludes mobile connections, which are covered in a separate section of the report. Akamai is able to collect the data because it operates one of the world’s largest distributed computing platforms and carries a large proportion of the world’s Web traffic through its systems.
Average connection speeds from South Africa were 2,1Mbit/s in the first quarter of 2013, a 3,5% improvement over the fourth quarter of 2012 and 16% over the first quarter of last year. Average peak connection speed was 7,6Mbit/s, an improvement of 25% on a year ago and 12% quarter on quarter.
However, these speeds are slower than those reported by Costa Rica (78th worldwide), Ecuador (72nd) and Turkey (61st).
Akamai says South Africa enjoyed a surge in the number of connections faster than 10Mbit/s, no doubt as a result of Telkom’s bringing faster VDSL broadband services online for the first time. The research show 1,5% of connections were on these fast connections, an improvement of 126% year on year.
However, growth in 4Mbit/s and faster connections — what Akamai defines as broadband — was much more muted, improving by 16% to 8% of all connections measured.
In the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, under which South Africa is grouped, the country with the fastest average connection speed was Switzerland (fourth worldwide), at 10,1Mbit/s, followed by the Netherlands (fifth) at 9,9Mbit/s and the Czech Republic (seventh) at 9,6Mbit/s. Romania topped the list for average peak connection speed in the region at 47,9Mbit/s.
With the exception of Italy, Turkey and South Africa, all countries in Emea surveyed had more than half of their connections to Akamai at speeds above 4Mbit/s.
“South Africa was the only surveyed Emea country with a broadband [over 4Mbit/s] adoption rate below 10% in the first quarter, at 8% adoption after an 8,5% quarterly increase,” the report says. “However, South Africa’s quarterly increase was more-or-less middle of the pack.”
Unsurprisingly, Korea tops the list for average measured connection speed worldwide at 14,2Mbit/s, though that’s a decline of 10% on the first quarter of 2012. Japan is second at 11,7Mbit/s, following by Hong Kong at 10,9Mbit/s.
South Africa fares little better in mobile access. Average access speeds on the unnamed telecoms provider “ZA-1” in the first quarter were just 0,5Mbit/s and peak average speeds were 2,8Mbit/s.
That compares poorly to other African markets like Morocco and Egypt, where average mobile access speeds on operators there were 1,5Mbit/s and 0,8Mbit/s respectively. Average peak speeds in Morocco and Egypt were 15,8Mbit/s and 6,1Mbit/s.
“The lowest average peak connection speed in the first quarter, 2,8Mbit/s, was seen in South Africa, on provider ZA-1, up 2,8% quarter over quarter,” the report says. “This increase was one of the smallest seen in the first quarter.” — (c) 2013 NewsCentral Media