Broadband speeds: SA versus Africa

Stats are highly questionable. You telling me that the average speed is 1.8mb when the majority of users are on 384k and 1mb? Sounds like they did the usual group test of "yes, we tested the speeds of 20 people in the same suburb and have extrapolated stats for the 1mil adsl lines".
 
Can someone explain the "Africa average peak connection speed" graph?

I see a graph with the y-axis labeld as "kbps" and having values of 1 1 2 2. So south africa is moving "up" from 2kbps to 2kbps?

Also, 2kbps... really?
 
Erm, I believe Akamai is used by all the big (read $$$$) companies... so yes they will use the most up to date and expensive connections.
Just because the big companies in JHB uses fast connections doesnt mean the rest of SA does, or that the whole of SA has a fast connection.

Well thats based on what I understand from RPM's description of them (http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/212578-Akamai). I might be wrong. :o

So then the Akamai comparison should be understood as a comparison of internet speed between the rich and elite companies in Africa using their service. Thats it. Nothing more.
 
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vzta22 said:
I don't believe these results and I doubt I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

:erm:

More people use mobile 3G than fixed ADSL lines. Mobile broadband on average is much faster than SA's fixed line ADSL. So it makes perfect sense...
 
SeRpEnT said:
Erm, I believe Akamai is used by all the big (read $$$$) companies... so yes they will use the most up to date and expensive connections.
Just because the big companies in JHB uses fast connections doesnt mean the rest of SA does, or that the whole of SA has a fast connection.

Well thats based on what I understand from RPM's description of them (http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/212578-Akamai). I might be wrong. :o

So then the Akamai comparison should be understood as a comparison of internet speed between the rich and elite companies in Africa using their service. Thats it. Nothing more.
Click to expand...

Akamai is used by the big companies yes... As a content delivery network (CDN). So a lot of the top media websites you visit, the content you are being delivered is from Akamai servers, and they track the speed at which you download the content. Which means if you use the internet a bit you've contributed to these figures by visiting one of the websites that uses Akamai.

In general the speeds will probably be slower(than ookla) as people are usually multi-tasking and not just going to one site at a time (whilst if you're running a speed test you'll probably just wait till it's finished) but more accurate for the kind of comparison that was made in the article, as a much larger user-base is tested.

Sorry if any of this is badly worded, or if there are grammar... It's been a long day and I couldn't be bothered to check it
 
SeRpEnT said:
Erm, I believe Akamai is used by all the big (read $$$$) companies...
Click to expand...
Yeah... like Facebook, Investec, Adobe, MTV, etc. I bet you don't visit any of those sites. :wtf:

Of course - if you have ever visited any of those websites then you have contributed to the stats ;)

Akamai claims that they serve between 15% and 30% of all web content. The probability that you haven't visited a website that uses Akamai is very small.
 
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