South Africa is currently 75 percent behind the world average broadband download speed, according to updated statistics by Ookla’s Net Index.
The country is 122nd out of 180 countries, with a speed as low as 3.42 Mbps, miles behind the world average of 12.73mbps worldwide.
Capitals Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban are 10th, 17th and 38th on the top speed national cities list, while Randburg is the fastest South African location to download from the Internet.
Countries like Mongolia, Tajikistan and Cambodia are all listed above South Africa, according to downloading rates.
“The government should look at broadband as a fourth utility -that’s the only way it can work,” Alpheus Mangale, Managing Director at Cisco, a subdivision of Technology & Financing International (TFI), told News24.
Mangale believes that Internet access should be just as important as water, electricity and sewerage services.
Ironically, Long-Term Evolution (LTE) roll out is predicted to slow down South Africa’s Internet speed, HumanIPO reported last week.
Mauritania is currently the African country with the highest broadband speed at 26.94mbps.
The updated survey, released on Tuesday, January 8, lists Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Lithuania and Luxembourg as the top speed broadband countries, all boasting with a download speed of more than 35mbps.
Regarding Internet cost, South Africa takes 58th position out of 64 countries among which the broadband access comparing to cost is rated. With a percentage of 7.8 at US$37.32/mbps cost relative to speed, South Africa is however still above Egypt, at 60th position with 15.91% at US$26.40/mbps.
Ookla is the world leader in broadband testing and web-based network diagnostic applications like Speedtest.net, Pingtest.net and Net Index.
