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While South Africa’s mobile connection speeds surpassed that of two other countries within the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (Brics) economic bloc, it remained at the lower end of the scale in a quarterly survey of 56 countries.
Akamai Technologies’ State of the Internet report for the first quarter of 2014, which reviewed countries’ use of mobile network providers to connect smartphones, tablets, computers and other devices to the Internet, showed average mobile connection speeds of between 1 Mb/s and 14.7 Mb/s.
South Africa reported average speeds of 1.7 Mb/s, ahead of India’s 1.3 Mb/s and Brazil’s 1.2 Mb/s, but far short of that recorded by China, at 4.8 Mb/s, and Russia, at 6.1 Mb/s.
Meanwhile, Egypt secured the top spot in the Africa region with an average speed of 2 Mb/s, followed by Morocco at 1.8 Mb/s.
Akamai’s latest quarterly report revealed that 20 of the countries reviewed had an average connection speed of between 4 Mb/s and 10 Mb/s.
South Korea emerged as the only country with average mobile connection speeds above the 10 Mb/s high-broadband threshold during the first three months of the year.
Argentina had the lowest average connection speed at just 1 Mb/s.
In South America, Venezuela emerged with the highest regional average speed of 4.3 Mb/s, while, in Europe, Ukraine achieved the top speed of 7.3 Mb/s.
Canada and Australia reported average connection speeds of 6.3 Mb/s and 4.6 Mb/s respectively.
Meanwhile, the average peak mobile connection speed among qualifying countries spanned from 114.2 Mb/s in Australia down to just 5 Mb/s in Iran.
In total, 43 countries showed average peak connection speeds above 10 Mb/s.
Between the three African countries reviewed, Morocco took the top spot, boasting peak speeds of 14.6 Mb/s, followed by Egypt with speeds of 11.6 Mb/s. South Africa recorded average peak speeds of 6 Mb/s during the first three months of the year.
Meanwhile, Russia reported peak speeds of 35.1 Mb/s, while Brazil, China and India achieved average peak speeds of 9.3 Mb/s, 12.2 Mb/s and 8.7 Mb/s respectively.
Slovakia reported speeds of 37 Mb/s, Canada 21.5 Mb/s, and Australia 114.2 Mb/s. In South America, Chile moved ahead of the pack with speeds of 11.2 Mb/s.
However, South Africa’s broadband-level adoption rate had surpassed that of Morocco, Egypt, India and Brazil.
The latest quarterly report, which had introduced the tracking of “broadband” level mobile connectivity – at speeds above 4 Mb/s – showed that South Africa had surpassed Egypt and Morocco to claim the highest level of mobile broadband adoption at 4.8%.
Egypt had an adoption rate of 2.5% and Morocco 1.1%, while India and Brazil reported adoption rates of 2.7% and 0.4% respectively.
Russia and China boasted rates of 63% and 57% respectively.
South Africa’s mobile broadband adoption rates also fell significantly short of those of other developed and developing economies globally.
Ukraine had the highest level of mobile broadband adoption, at 89%, while South Korea recorded 78% mobile connections above 4 Mb/s.
Canada recorded the highest level in North America at 60%, while Australia, with 40%, and Venezuela, with 69%, achieved the top spots in their respective regions.
At the lower end, Vietnam, Paraguay and Bolivia recorded adoption rates of just 0.1% in the first quarter.
Four of the 56 countries reviewed had mobile broadband adoption rates above 75%, another nine above 50%, eleven more above 25%, and a further nine above 10%.