SA lagging in broadband speeds
The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) recently released their latest broadband statistics which included the average speeds in all OECD regions.
According to the organization’s research the average advertised download speed in the OECD is 13.7 Mbit/s. This includes speeds from a variety of offerings available in all 30 OECD countries.
The fastest average advertised download speeds are in Japan (93 Mbit/s), France (44 Mbit/s), Korea (43 Mbit/s) and Sweden (21 Mbit/s). Japan further has the fastest residential download speed available in the OECD at 1 Gbit/s.
Nearly all broadband connections in the OECD are fixed line connections, and here Fibre-to-the-home rules the roost. The average Fibre-to-the-home advertised download speeds in the OECD regions is 77.1 Mbit/s, much higher than DSL (9.0 Mbit/s), cable (8.6 Mbit/s) or fixed wireless (1.8 Mbit/s).
Advertised upload speeds on fibre connections are more than 36 times faster than average advertised upload speeds on DSL, cable or wireless networks.
o Fibre-to-the-home/building: 58.6 Mbit/s
o DSL: 1.6 Mbit/s
o Cable: 0.7 Mbit/s
o Fixed wireless: 0.7 Mbit/s
South African Comparison
In South Africa there are five main broadband providers, namely Telkom (ADSL), Vodacom (HSDPA), MTN (HSDPA), iBurst and Sentech (MyWireless).
The average advertised download speed of these services is 1.5 Mbit/s, far lower than the OECD’s 13.7 Mbit/s.
Increasingly, online services are tailored for broadband users in developed countries, and unless South Africa remains in touch with its international counterparts regarding broadband speeds, local broadband users may find themselves on the wrong end of the digital divide.
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