And no, I’m not making fun of my beloved country, the word “Narrowband” does exist and Zim is very close to the top. If you’re in Zimbabwe and you’re viewing this blog on a +256 Kbps connection, you’re amoung a priviledged 4% of Zim internet users!
In a “State of the Internet” report released by Akamai Technologies three days ago, Zimbabwe ranks 6th in the list of countries with the slowest internet connections, with 96% of our internet connections below 256 Kbps. At the top is Wallis and Futuna an island territory in the South Pacific between Fiji and Samoa. Malawi is ahead of us, ranking 5 with 97% of connections below 256 Kbps. Other countries in the top 10 are Uganda, Cuba, Rwanda, the Solom Islands and Equatorial Guinea and the islands Vanuatu and Mayotte. The global average is 5.6%.
Akamai Technologies provides services for accelerating and improving the delivery of content and applications over the Internet, from live and on-demand streaming videos to conventional content on Websites, to tools that help people transact business. Each quarter, Akamai publishes a quarterly “State of the Internet” report. This report includes data gathered from across Akamai’s global server network about attack traffic and broadband adoption, as well as trends seen in this data over time.
The assessment also reports that a Weather balloons technology developed by American telecoms company Space Data, may bring cheap broadband to Africa. The technology is being marketed by two Nigerians, Collins Nwani and Timothy Anyasi, who have secured exclusive rights to it. The technology works by using hydrogen-filled weather balloons as satellites. Internet users connect to the balloons via modems and are connected to the nearest network operations center (NOC) which in turn routes the connection to Internet gateways.