Loading ...Cell C halves data prices
Cell C has more than halved the prices of some of its most popular data packages in a promotion introduced today
10GB for R199 mobile data promotion extended
8ta has extended their 10GB, 3GB and 120GB data promotion by more than six months
It’s official – broadband caps cause problems
A new academic study shows that capping monthly broadband usage trigger uneasy user experiences
WirelessG explains in-flight Wi-Fi meltdown
The maiden Mango in-flight Wi-Fi voyage in South Africa was a disaster when the system buckled under the load. WirelessG explains.
MTN 2GB for R189 promotion extended
MTN has extended its 2GB internet bundle deal for an additional three months
What is broadband?
| Rudolph Muller | July 27, 2010 | No comments |
Rudolph Muller
Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...
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The Department of Communications says broadband has a downlink speed of 256 Kbps, but is this definition outdated?
The debate about what exactly broadband is rages on across the globe, with definitions being updated all the time to keep track with ever increasing speeds.
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Standardization Sector defines broadband as a “transmission capacity that is faster than primary rate Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) at 1.5 or 2.0 Megabits per second (Mbits)”.
The United States’ (US) Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently adapted its definition, describing a broadband service as offering actual download speeds of at least 4 Mbps and actual upload speeds of at least 1 Mbps.
South Africa’s broadband definitions
In 2006 the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) defined broadband as a service with a minimum download speed of 256Kbps in its ADSL regulations. No downlink speed was provided by ICASA.
The Department of Communications (DoC) recently defined broadband as “an always available, multimedia connection with a download speed of at least 256 Kbps” in its ‘Broadband Policy for South Africa’. No downlink speed was defined.
It is highly debatable whether download speeds of 256 Kbps are adequate to use all current Internet services without a fair amount of irritation.
South Africa on the wrong side of the digital divide
In October 2009 the University of Oxford and the University of Oviedo’s Department of Applied Economics released the results of their Broadband Quality Study, a project which set out to establish where countries feature in terms of broadband quality, and whether they are on the right side of the digital divide.
The study found that the average worldwide download throughput is 4.75 Megabits per second (Mbps) while the average upload throughput is 1.3 Mbps. This is multiple times higher than the DoC’s broadband benchmark.
This Broadband Quality Study highlights a country’s ability to benefit from next-generation web applications and services, and South Africa finished a dismal 60th out of the 66 countries surveyed. This essentially means that local Internet users are not well equipped to take advantage of the most common web applications available on the Internet.
