Paul,   I found some 2010 figures, and we seem to be doing reasonably well in leadership ranking, although it would seem we were doing better in 2008 without the cables, or is this Cisco doing some fuzzy math?   http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_101710.html   Cisco using the data from 40 million real-life broadband quality tests conducted in May-June of 2010 on the Internet speed testing site, speedtest.net, the researchers were able to evaluate the broadband quality of 72 countries around the globe.   Lucy

Lucy, If we look at broadband by households, the situation is even more dire - 0.06%. Most broadband offerings are in the upmarket areas (WiMax, FTTH and maybe some ADSL. Also, some CDMA dial up speeds barely qualify as broadband). Most BB connections therefore are for businesses (VSAT, WiMax, ADSL, etc). The other issue has to do with the way service providers market their products - and this is not peculiar to Kenya. I have read about similar situations happening in the UK (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3563320.stm) and even RSA. An operator may state that they are offering a broadband connection, say on WiMax without really disclosing the contention ratio. Even a 1 Mbps connection with a 1:4 contention ratio (which works out to abt 256kbps) is not always assured except at off-peak periods. So, even after factoring in these "broadband" services, the connections are not that many. Not many consumers are aware they can do speed tests on their connections either. if I may quote a wikipaedia entry "the 2006 OECD report[2] is typical by defining broadband as having download data transfer rates equal to or faster than 256 kbit/s, while the United States (US) Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as of 2010, defines "Basic Broadband" as data transmission speeds of at least 4 megabits per second (Mbps), or 4,000,000 bits per second, downstream (from the Internet to the user's computer) and 1 Mbit/s upstream (from the user's computer to the Internet". If your nephew has a 3G handset, and on a network offering 3G, then yes, he is on broadband but if its a mobile phone (and not a USB modem) then it does not really count as a shared household connection. If we were to look at the total number of mobile 3G subscribers, as stated before, it would not really make a dent in the overall broadband penetration. On Dec 6, 2010 5:11pm, Lucy Kimani <[email protected]> wrote:

Francis,

You are correct, the IDC statistics might give a better picture if they reflected broadband adoption for households to include families who may be sharing a connection as well as broadband on mobile devices using my nephew as an example -- he is on Facebook 24/7 using his mobile these days, and I am not sure at what speeds. Is there a standard definition of "broadband penetration" in the industry?

Lucy

--- On Mon, 12/6/10, Francis Hook [email protected]> wrote:

From: Francis Hook [email protected]> Subject: Re: [kictanet] The Cables and more... To: [email protected] Cc: "KICTAnet KICTAnet" [email protected]> Date: Monday, December 6, 2010, 3:07 AM

1 - IDC measures broadband connections as those with a speed of at least 256kbps (ideally it should be 512kbps).

2 - In Kenya, total broadband penetration (excluding mobile broadband which we presently do not count - but will from 2011) as of end 2009 stood at 0.15%. A really large chunk of this comprises business BB connections.

3 - Presently Mobile BB may not really ramp up the figures (at least not more than a quarter of a percentage point ie 0.25% ) much since;

a) the devices (USB Modems/Smartphones) that allow speeds of >256kbps are not that many (and we will soon be tracking these as well),

b) The present coverage of 3G also distorts the true measure of MOBILE broadband

Rgds

Francis

On 5 December 2010 19:56, [email protected]> wrote:

True Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone from Zain Kenya

-----Original Message----- From: Lucy Kimani [email protected]>

Sender: [email protected]: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 07:05:31 To: [email protected]> Cc: KICTAnet [email protected]>

Subject: Re: [kictanet] The Cables and more...

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet

This message was sent to: [email protected] Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/pkukubo%40ict.go.ke

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet

This message was sent to: [email protected] Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/francis.hook%40gmail.co...

-- Francis Hook +254 733 504561

-----Inline Attachment Follows-----

_______________________________________________ kictanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/listinfo/kictanet

This message was sent to: [email protected] Unsubscribe or change your options at http://lists.kictanet.or.ke/mailman/options/kictanet/lkimani%40yahoo.com