Venn, CEO of Spectranet explains why Nigeria’s internet speed ranked lowest in MEA
A new report by Akamai, a content delivery platform, which ranked Internet speed across Africa has revealed that Nigeria ranked among the lowest and most frustrating in the sub-Saharan Africa as Kenya lead in Africa at 12.2Mbps.
Whereas Qatar, and Israel’s Internet speed is cruising at 13.7Mbps topping chart in Middle East and Asia regions, Nigeria’s Internet speed ranked 114 out of 143 countries surveyed, with a speed of 3.9Mbps against a global standard of 7.2Mbps.
In a telephone interview on Wednesday with the chief executive of Spectranet, leading 4G data services in Nigeria, Mr. David Venn, he said “Nigeria’s internet is still driven by 3G and it is not known to be fast enough”.
He said 3G is good for voice but not for data.
“I think the ranking is fair, because when you talk of speed, you talk about 4G and fibre.
So if you are living in the Middle East or Europe, you will have fibre or cable into your rooms and that is speed because both are cruising on 4G which is a fast data technology,” Venn noted.
The report for first quarter (Q1 2017), released in May, surveyed countries in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) regions.
The Content Delivery Network (CDN) Service Firm noted that the average connection speed posted by the MEA leaders was almost 12Mbps higher than that seen in Egypt, which had 2.0Mbps, making it the MEA country with the slowest speeds, whereas the gap between the top- and bottom-ranked countries was 13 Mbps in the previous quarter.
According to the report, three surveyed MEA countries had average connection speeds above 10Mbps in Q1 2017 — down from four in the Q4 2016. At the other end of the spectrum, three surveyed MEA countries saw average connection speeds below 4Mbps in Q1, up from two in the previous quarter including Nigeria at 3.9Mbps.
Quarterly changes among the MEA countries were mixed, with five countries posting gains. These ranged from 0.1 per cent in Turkey to 15 per cent in Qatar. Among the eight countries seeing quarter-over-quarter declines, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had the biggest loss at 20 per cent, while Morocco had the smallest at 0.4 per cent.
Year-over-year changes were mostly positive, with only two countries — Egypt, and the UAE seeing declines of 19 per cent and 2.2 per cent respectively. Kenya, and Qatar had the largest yearly increases, as their average connection speeds jumped 67 per cent and 64 per cent respectively, while Israel posted the smallest gain at 1.4 per cent.
On mobile connectivity, contributed by telecommunications equipment operator, Ericsson, which provided insight into mobile voice-and data-traffic trends, said Nigeria, and Qatar did not qualify as they did not meet the minimum requirement of 25,000 unique IPv4 addresses seen by Akamai and identified as coming from a mobile network during the quarter.
In Q1 2017, 62 surveyed countries/regions around the world qualified for inclusion in the mobile section, up from 61 in Q2 2016. The countries that qualified in MEA were Israel, Egypt, Iran, Kenya, Kuwait, Morocco, Namibia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, and UAE.
Among the qualifying surveyed countries/regions, 32 in total had an average mobile connection speed at or above the 10Mbps broadband threshold (up from 30 in the previous quarter), while 60 achieved average speeds at or above the 4Mbps broadband level (up from 58). Within the individual continental regions, the following qualifying surveyed countries/regions had the highest average mobile connection speeds: Americas: United States, 10.7Mbps Asia Pacific: Australia, 15.7Mbps Europe: United Kingdom, 26.0Mbps Middle East/Africa: Kenya, 13.7Mbps.
