South African Broadband – In the last 5 out of 66 countries tested
Oct1Written by:
2009/10/01 11:04 AM 
A study of the global state of broadband has put South Africa in the last 5 out of 66 countries in terms of the quality of its networks. Much has been said from the government and other players about increasing the broadband quality, availablity and pricing structure. But it is all just talk. No action. Typical for most African Countries
The research for Cisco placed countries such as Colombia, Morocco, Vietnam higher than South Africa. Even countries like Slovakia, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania. South Africa was listed last among countries whose broadband is below the needs of today, let alone even considering expanding for the future.
So much for the great hype from the likes of Telkom and other broadband players. I say, stop feeding us this rubbish and propaganda that broadband in South Africa is good and comparable. It sucks. Fix it already.
The study was conducted jointly by Oxford University's Säid Business School and the University of Oviedo's Department of Applied Economics.
It found that the average global download speed globally was 4.75Mbps (megabits per second), while average upload speed was 1.3Mbps. What is that an average. I would kill to get an average of half that.
Researchers worked out how fit countries were to cope with the demands of today's users based on a set of applications consumers are likely to use. With the 2010 approaching and the promise of Telkom to improve bandwidth one would think that we would at least be up there with the average. I do not see South Africa improving on these stats any time soon.
From their site “The Broadband Quality Score (BQS) for each country was determined using a formula that weighted each category according to the quality requirements of a set of popular applications now and in the future. Typical applications for today include web browsing, social networking, music downloads, basic video streaming and video chatting, standard definition IPTV, and enterprise-class home offices. Future applications include consumer telepresence for communications, healthcare and education, high-quality video file sharing and streaming, high-definition IPTV, cinema-quality live event broadcasts and advanced home automation.”
It is clear, that South Africa will not be ready for 2010 or anything in the near future. It is clear we are not ready for anything today as far as broadband is concerned. Perhaps we should change that terminology and use the term “BadBand”, for it is more applicable.
Further Reading:
What do you think of South African Broadband?
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2 comment(s) so far...
Re: South African Broadband – In the last 5 out of 66 countries tested
Pathetic is absolutely right. But what to do as a consumer, what to do? Have you seen fedup.co.za ? It's run by Scott Cundill and he may just be interested in broadcasting a piece like this for you. Look him up, and lets take consumer rights to the masses.
By Markoel on
2009/10/01 11:36 AM
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Re: South African Broadband – In the last 5 out of 66 countries tested
Thanks Mark,I went to the site. Tried to sign-up, but could not find anywhere to join. Do you ahve any other contact details
By Robert Bravery on
2009/10/01 12:16 PM
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