Broadband30.09.2015

These tables show how much South Africa’s broadband stinks

By Staff Writer

Akamai has released its Q2 2015 State of the Internet report, which shows that South Africa is the only measured country in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) region which failed to meet basic broadband standards.

The report further showed that South Africa’s average broadband speed and average peak broadband speed are declining.

Akamai’s State of the Internet report is based on data gathered from the company’s Intelligent Platform, and provides insights into global connectivity and Internet metrics.

According to Akamai, South Africa performed dismally when it came to broadband speeds and broadband adoption rates.

Average broadband speeds

According to the report, the global average connection speed increased 3.5% to 5.1Mbps in the second quarter of 2015.

Average connection speeds among the top 10 countries remained well above 10Mbps, and six of the 10 had average connection speeds above 15Mbps.

South Korea had the highest average broadband speed at 23.1Mbps, followed by Hong Kong at 17Mbps and Japan on 16.4Mbps.

South Africa recorded an average broadband speed of 3.3Mbps – failing to meet the broadband threshold of 4Mbps.

While global speeds increased, South Africa showed a decline in average broadband speeds – down 1.7% quarter-to-quarter.

Average peak connection speeds

In the second quarter of 2015, global average peak connection speeds increased 12% to 32.5Mbps.

This figure represents the average of the maximum measured connection speeds across all of the unique IP addresses seen by Akamai.

Singapore had the highest average peak connection speed at 108Mbps, followed by Hong Kong at 95Mbps and South Korea at 83Mbps.

In South Africa, the average peak connection speed was 16.8Mbps – a quarter-to-quarter decline of 0.3%.

Broadband adoption rate

The global percentage of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai that met the 4Mbps broadband threshold increased 1.1 percentage points to 64%.

South Africa’s broadband adoption rate of 19% is the lowest of all countries listed in the EMEA region. It also represented a quarterly decline of 3.8%.

South Africa was also the only country in the EMEA region that did not have more than 70% of its unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai at average speeds above 4Mbps in the fourth quarter.