So what is the average for all speeds up to 1 Mb/s for the Vodacom network?
Around the same I would guess. Will check.
But you're not comparing apples with apples. Let me explain.
If you have a network where
EVERY modem is 1Mb/s capable (clearly the towers are as well), you have a "homogeneous-1Mb/s" environment (i.e. the complete network can be deemed to be a 1Mb/s network) and you can use the averaged results of all tests up to 1Mb/s as it is impossible to get a speed test higher than 1Mb/s. So it (the speedtest.net results) works in this case.
WBS's iBurst network is probably unique in this regard, the only true 'single speed' network deployed in SA. Most of the other networks have a wide variety of modems and towers. Cell C comes a close second with a dual-speed network with at least 2 speeds on the modem side.
If you have a more established network where the modem capability varies widely, from 256Kb/s to 21Mb/s which speed do you take as indicative of the network? You'll have to use the modem distribution as an indicator and see if there is a sweet spot somewhere. If not, you can only really quote the total data set as the average of the complete network. Currently this number is somewhere between 3 and 4 Mb/s for Vodacom.
If a specific modem type (say 3.6Mb/s) is by far dominant on the network, you could take all results below this point (3.6Mb/s) and average them to get to a similar averaged number. But this is not the case, no specific 'modem speed' makes up 80%+ of modems active. You just know the averages are pushed down by the modem distribution.
This all comes back to the original point of this article; You cannot use the Ookla results outright without understanding the end-to-end environment being tested.
It's a pity Ookla don't log the modem speed as part of the test results.
