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The figure below shows the correlation between International bandwidth Inn Figure 12) and the normalized derived PingER throughput. It can be seen that the correlation is good (R 2
~ 0.59). It is also seen that the African countries (in Magenta) lie towards the bottom left where both the throughput and International Bandwidth are low. Libya is an anomaly since the only site monitored there is the email server for the Libya Telecommunications which should have good connectivity compared to most sites in Libya.
To verify whether the order of magnitude of the normalized derived throughput is correct we compare it with the Speedtest results from www.zdnet.com.au/broadband/results.htm. This application sends a known amount of data between your computer and servers in Australia. Then it measures throughput and besides returning the result to the user, it also saves and makes available the results by country and ISP. The correlation is shown in the figure below. The orders of magnitude of the two methods agree and there is a strong correlation. As expected the African countries have the poorest results.
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- Access to the internet is so desirable to students in Africa that they spend considerable time and money to get it. Many students surveyed, with no internet connection at their universities, resorted to private, fee-charging internet cafes to study and learn.
Possible Remedies
Advantage of investing in IT
In the industrial age a pre-requisite was an expensive infrastructure of roads, railways, ports to distribute raw materials and products, plus factories (e.g. steel making, cars etc.). In today?s information age: help, technical information is readily accessible online, so one person with a computer and an Internet connection can be productive (e.g. outsourcing of help, information services etc.) An Internet connection is a necessary pre-requisite and cheaper to install than a highway. To compete in today?s world, investment in IT and networking is critical to enable opportunity and productivity. It can also help minimize brain drain by making Africa more attractive to trained people.
Digital Divide Steps
It is clear that there are many Digital Divides, by region, country, within countries, age groups, city vs rural etc. How one tackles the DD varies from country to country, region to region etc. Typically we (International Committee on Future Accelerators (ICFA) / Standing Committee on Inter-regional Connectivity (SCIC)) have seen for Brazil, Romania, Pakistan and India it involves :
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Conclusions
- Poor performance affects data transfer, multi-media, VoIP, IT development & country performance / development
- DD exists between regions, within regions, within countries, rural vs cities, between age groups?
- Decreasing use of satellites, expensive, but still needed for many remote countries in Africa and C. Asia
- Last mile problems, and network fragility
- International Exchange Points (IXPs) needed
- Internet performance (non subjective, relatively easy/quick to measure) correlate strongly with economic/technical/development indices
- Increase coverage of monitoring to understand Internet performance and validate improvements
- Africa worst by all measures (throughput, loss, jitter, DOI, international bandwidth, users, costs) and falling further behind.
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