Internet connections: from 12 meg to 2 gig
April 18, 2013A report on the average national consumer download speeds has been released by netindex.com. Ranking 182 countries around the globe reveals results which some may find surprising.
At the same time, a recognised global brand has announced a new Japanese service with the world’s fastest download speed – 2 gigabytes per second (Gbps)!
Based on millions of recent test results from Speedtest.net, the ‘Household Download Index‘ compares and ranks consumer download speeds around the globe.
The value measured was the rolling mean throughput, in Mbps over the past 30 days, where the mean distance between the client and the server is less than 300 miles.
Naturally, these criteria tend to favourably skew results for smaller country size and higher population density, so it is perhaps not surprising that Hong Kong leads the way with an average speed of 43.94 Mbps.
Indeed, Hong Kong is the only country with an average connection speed in the 40 Mbps range. In the 30s are second-ranked Singapore (39.85 Mbps) and at position 9, Japan. In the 20s are 12 Sweden (29.05 Mbps) down to 23 United Kingdom. Ranked in position 25, Germany has an average 19.12 Mbps speed followed by 26, Russia and at 32, the USA.
Australia appears in the list at position 42 with an average Internet connection speed of 12.77 Mbps. With a similar national area, but the world’s largest population, China is in position 59 at 9.65 Mbps. The slowest country ranked, at position 182, is the African country of Benin, with a recorded average connection speed of 0.70 Mbp.
Country size naturally impacts infrastructure investment and together with population density explains why Australia, (one of the world’s largest but most sparsely populated countries) delivers such a poor result (12.77 Mbps).
As an Australian general election approaches, there is much debate from both major political parties about the optimum speed and vast cost of rolling out a national Broadband Network (NBN). At the upper level, the incument Labour government’s proposed NBN is to deliver 100 Mbps download and 40 Mbps upload over NBN fibre. The opposition Liberal party is advancing a more modest 25 Mbps solution and reduced investment.
Neither of these are more than a fraction of the potentially lightning speed of Sony’s ‘Nuro‘ solution for Japan.
On Monday, Sony owned, So-net Entertainment began offering its “Nuro” fiber-based service to homes, apartments and small businesses in Tokyo and six surrounding prefectures. The 2Gbps Internet service, is the world’s fastest for home use. The service includes rental of an ONU (optical network unit) designed to handle the high speeds via fibre.
In Tokyo and other cities, many Japanese lives in apartment buildings, which has made it easier to roll out fiber services. So-net said its service uses the GPON, or Gigabit-capable Passive Optics Networks, standard, which supports up to 2.488 Gbps downstream.
The claimed speed for Nuro are double the 1 Gbps FTTH download speed being deployed by Google in Kansas City, Kansas and Austin, Texas.
About 25% of Japanese households are currently connected, the second-highest rate in the world, according to data from regional FTTH, or Fibre to the Home, organizations. The UAE is the highest at over 70%.
However the just-released ‘NBN Business Readiness Survey 2013‘, indicates that although one in two organisations expect the NBN to change the way they do business, only one in four believe themselves ready for these changes!
Findings of the ‘Connected Small Business 2013 report‘ (published by Deloitte Access Economics), revealed the main barriers for businesses adoption of new technology (such as the NBN), is because many companies are procrastinating due to one or more of the following reasons:
- uncertainty on which actions they need to take
- challenged by the cost of risks of change
- uncertain of the relevance of digital to their business
These are all indications of an ignorance or lack of awareness of the digital landscape.
For corporates in this position, Digital Tsunami offers the expertise developed over 16 years of delivering effective digital solutions, and a principal who has been delivering marketing solutions since 1983.
We call this eStrategy; a wholistic approach to internal and external marketing communications which encompasses: branding, digital, mobile, photography, print, social and web platforms.
Sources:
http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
http://www.retailbiz.com.au/2013/04/17/article/businesses-get-nbn-ready/
http://mashable.com/2013/04/15/sony-internet-japan/
http://www.so-net.ne.jp/corporation/en/
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/nbn-debate-ignores-new-era-for-apps-ideas
https://www.deloitteaccesseconomics.com.au/nbn_business_readiness_survey
https://www.deloitteaccesseconomics.com.au/connected_small_business
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/japan-blitzes-australias-nbn-fibre-speeds
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