Walu, On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 11:06 AM, Walubengo J <jwalu@yahoo.com> wrote:
@Dr. Zaipuna,
I can tell you are a true scholar from your consistent and persistent approach :-). Defining and agreeing on what is Broadband Internet is indeed the first step to harmonizing research in this domain.
Again, ITU (apologies for quoting what appears to be a discredited ITU*) in the same publication observes that Broadband meant different things across the 200 economies /countries sampled. With the observation that only 30% of the world giving its definition of broadband as a minimum link of 2Mbit/s - the rest advertising it as below this figure.
The situation gets murkier when ITU observes that the said broadband service can be offered over fixed-line(fiber/copper), fixed broadband(wireless), mobile broadband (GSM) amongst others. To harmonize its ranking, ITU takes a re-calculated price of 1Mbits/s Fixed broadband (wireless) across the economies.
It further notes that in Africa, Mobile broadband is more common and provides another ranking based on 500MB and 1GB data bundles per month - of which East Africa is still at the bottom quarter of the food chain in terms of affordability :-) . Obviously data bundles (Volume based and caped) vs 1Mb/s "unlimited data" per month can spawn an entirely new debate within the context of broadband quality...and perhaps outside the scope of the esteemed Listers here.
Agreed, I would also like to note that comparing MegaBits per second with a quantity of MegaBytes is a chalk and cheese comparison. -- Cheers, McTim "A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A route indicates how we get there." Jon Postel