Top broadband nations revealed

The OECD has released its latest fixed and mobile broadband rankings, showing how shockingly far SA is lagging behind OECD nations

Staff Writer

July 19, 2012

The OECD has released its latest fixed broadband rankings, revealing that Switzerland tops fixed broadband ranking while South Korea leads in wireless broadband.

According to the OECD, Switzerland tops the OECD fixed broadband ranking for the first time, with 39.9 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, followed closely by the Netherlands (39.1), and Denmark (37.9). The OECD average is 25.6 subscribers per 100 inhabitants.

South Africa had 827,091 subscribers at the end of March 2012, translating into a fixed broadband penetration rate of 1.7%. Considering that the OECD average is 25.6 subscribers per 100 inhabitants, it highlights how poorly SA is performing when looking at global standards.

Fixed wired broadband subscriptions reached 314 million in the OECD area at the end of 2011, although growth slowed to 1.8% in the second half.

Year-on-year subscriptions rose by 4.1%. Greece, Poland and Chile experienced the highest growth (6%) to reach 21.8, 15.0, and 11.7 respectively.

The overall share of DSL subscriptions continues to decrease (55.8%), to the benefit of cable (30%), and especially fibre-to-the-home subscriptions which now represent 13.7% of the total number of fixed broadband subscriptions.

Wireless broadband subscriptions showed healthy growth of over 13% in the last six months and Korea (100.6) and Sweden (98.0) continue to top the table. The global number of wireless broadband subscriptions in OECD countries totals 667 million, up from 590 million in June 2011.

OECD Fixed (wired) broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants – December 2011

The situation looks slightly better when looking at only the number of broadband subscribers. Here South Africa, with 827,091 fixed broadband subscribers, ranks at number 30 out of 35 nations.

The following graph shows the total number of fixed (wired) broadband subscriptions, by country, millions, December 2011. It should be noted that SA’s number is for March 2012.