Nigeria’s broadband internet speed which places the country in the 6th position in Africa, coming after Kenya, Seychelles, Morocco, South Africa, and Tunisia, is a further testament to the fact that the country still has a long way to go in providing critical information technology infrastructures required to scale up in internet driven commerce.
Nigeria’s National Broadband Plan (2013 – 2018) which terminates next year is from all indication going to terminate without attainment of the 30 percent goal. In the country today, broadband internet penetration is still below 20 percent; a figure even public officials find difficult to be consistent about. However, if made to grow at the same pace as mobile telephone services, it is expected to give a massive boost to the economy, even as it suffers from poor infrastructure required for broadband growth.
This is important if the country will be competitive in an internet driven age where businesses require Internet access as an essential resource for their operations. Even when for small businesses it may not seem like the company could benefit (from going online) there are still some very good reasons to get online. The short answer; it simply is where the world is heading, and has been for a while.
Today, most business leaders and owners are quite aware of how much their companies rely on the use of computers and the internet on a daily basis. However, simply having access to the internet doesn’t mean a company is benefitting as much as you could from its efficiencies. The importance of internet speed should not be overlooked when evaluating a company’s technology functions.
Nigeria ranks 95 out of 189 countries, with a mean download speed of 3.15mbs as shown by data which was collected across the 12 months up to 10 May this year by M-Lab, a partnership between New America’s Open Technology Institute, Google Open Source Research, Princeton University’s PlanetLab, and other supporting partners, and compiled by Cable.co.uk.
On the other hand, Kenya which ranked 51st globally with internet speeds of about 9mbps implies that it would take just under 2hrs to download a 7.5GB HD movie.
The five fastest countries have download speeds around 40 times faster than the five slowest. Singapore tops the table at 55.13Mbps, compared to Yemen, which is more than 162 times slower at just 0.34Mbps.
In Singapore which ranks 1st in the world, it would take 18 minutes 34 seconds to download the same 7.5GB HD movie, clocking at a mean speed of 55.13 mbps, whereas in Yemen which is last on the table, the download will be completed after two days.
20 of the top 30 fastest-performing countries are located in Europe, with 7 in Asia, 2 in North America and 1 in Oceania. By contrast, 17 of the 30 slowest-performing countries are located in Africa, with 7 in Asia, 6 in South America and 1 in Oceania.
Giving the concepts of Download Speed and Upload Speed some perspective, download speed is the rate of data transfer from the internet to a specific user’s computer. Upload Speed refers to the speed at which data is sent from a user’s computer out to a website on the internet.
Most people consider an internet connection to be either fast or slow based on the Download Speed that they get from their Internet Service Provider (ISP). For most people, this is the most relevant information for their day-to-day needs. But, for other users who require more from internet access than for instance, just streaming media content, then there is more to be considered.
In the business world, Upload Speed has become increasingly important to communicating with clients and keeping the business running so that bills can get paid as and at when due. The Upload Speed, or the speed at which a business’ important data can reach its destination, can often be critical to business operations.
CALEB OJEWALE
