TMCnet News
Nigeria Leads in Global Internet Speed Ranking(AllAfrica Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Less than 11 years after liberalising its telecommunications market, Nigeria's broadband internet speed has been rated better than that of South Africa out of the top four African nations according to the latest State of the Internet report by Akamai Technologies Global Internet Platform's rating. In the first quarter 2012 report, Nigeria had average 322kbps, peak 5674kbps, South Africa had average 496kbps, peak 2172kbps. "All mobile providers had average peak connection speeds above 2 mbps, though last place South African provider, ZA-1 was just above the threshold, losing over 13 per cent from the prior quarter, at 2.2 mbps," the report stated. In the 4th quarter 2011 report, South Africa was one of only two countries listed in the report with an average peak connection speed below 2 mbps. South Africa had average 442kbps over Nigeria's 286kbps, however, Nigeria outperformed with peak 4871kbps and average 462mbps per month over South Africa's 1654kbps and 197mbps. Egypt had average 539kbps but a poor peak 3413kbps and 123 average mbps per month. Morocco had average 1125kbps, peak 7949kbps and a dismal 246mbps per month. Nigeria was top in Africa on the monthly average megabit used by African countries. With West African Cable System (WACS), Main One Cable and Glo-1 supporting SAT1 operated by Nigeria's NITEL, it is expected that as telecom operators connect the hinterland, internet traffic would triple. South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Latvia, Switzerland, Ireland, Czech Republic, Belgium and France were in the top 10, while USA was a distant 12th in the first quarter of 2012 internet top spot rankings. South Korea was the lone standout among the top 10, with a 1.5 per cent drop, though it remains nearly five mbps faster than second place Japan. Globally, 117 countries that qualified for inclusion saw average connection speeds increase quarter-over-quarter, with gains ranging from 0.2 per cent in Montenegro (to 2.8 mbps) to 75 per cent in Libya(to 0.5 mbps). Copyright Leadership. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). |