WITH the frenetic pace of global telecommunications it is challenging to keep track of things.
In the last year much progress has been made in South Africa with undersea cables, domestic networks and next-generation cellular infrastructure coming online - or so it would seem.
But how far have we come by global standards, and how are we stacking up against other countries?
While SA has been making progress in essentially catching up with the rest of the world, little has been happening in developed countries in terms of capacity. Instead, debates have been raging around access methodologies and the fight, by some, for net neutrality or access to remain open and free of control - something we've never had in SA and likely never will.
But in the developing world we find remarkable progress being made with countries like Kenya, which had virtually no access to speak of just two years ago and now is leapfrogging South Africa.
In SA we have a sort of a second-world scenario with elements of both the first and third world. We do not have the advantage Kenya has of being able to build brand new networks in a greenfield environment, and we have faced backwards legislation and policies that stunted the progress of what we did have in place.
So while we are catching up with the developed world, albeit slowly, other emerging markets are pulling ahead of us.
Recent studies into the global access status quo have highlighted our position.
One of the most sophisticated of such studies has just been concluded at the University of Oxford. It is undertaken annually by MBA students from the Saïd Business School and the University of Oviedo's Department of Applied Economics, and is sponsored by Cisco.
According to this research, South Africa ranks 42nd in the world for the quality of its broadband internet connectivity.
The results cannot be taken at face value, however.
The research divided countries into three different categories according to economic drivers. These are factor-driven (Stage 1), efficiency-driven (Stage 2) and innovation-driven (Stage 3) economies.
SA falls under Stage 2 - efficiency driven - and in this group came dead last out of 34 countries. Bulgaria was the group winner, in case you were wondering.
This either suggests South Africa no longer belongs in this group, or seriously sucks compared to its contemporaries.
Africa didn't do badly in general, however, with Ghana coming first in Stage 1 - factor-driven economies. But the most impressive results came from Kenya.
The average global quality of broadband was shown to have improved by 20% over the last three years, with some countries showing improvements of over 50%. Exceptional emerging economies, such as Latvia and Bulgaria, showed improvements of around 60% in just one year.
But Kenya holds the record with a whopping 174% improvement over three years, although we must bear in mind that it was starting from just about nothing.
Nonetheless, with political will and providers such as Wananchi rolling out next-generation connectivity, such as fibre to the home that eclipses ADSL for speed, it is easy to see that South Africa can no longer be considered an internet leader on the continent.
Our progress over the last year, according to the study, was at 10%. Good in terms of developed nations, but poor compared to emerging markets.
The study commented: "South Africa showed a marked improvement from 2009... However, it still remains below the threshold of meeting the quality requirements of today’s applications."
With domestic broadband networks about to light up in a big way and more undersea cables plugging in, hopefully we'll have shown better progress when the study is repeated next year. Now, about that political will...
- Fin24