JAMAICA’S WIFI 4th IN REGION

Guess the average time to download a 5GB movie using WiFi in Jamaica? More than an hour, says a global broadband speed assessment.

Conducted in 200 countries, 25 from Caricom, the assessment recorded download speeds from June 2017 to May 2018. It is the most detailed analysis now available and shows improvement in the region. While Jamaica came in 4th at 8.25 Mbps, we continue to have issues with data connectivity and internet speed from service providers.

Barbados had the highest download speed (17.08Mbps) and Haiti the lowest (2.42Mbps).

Methodology

The 2018 broadband speed test data were collected by M-Lab, a partnership with New America’s Open Technology Institute, Google Open Source Research, Princeton University’s PlanetLab and other stakeholders. The results were compiled by the UK’s triple-play telecommunications provider Cable.

From Cable’s data, the ICT Pulse extracted the Caricom results, which can be seen in the tables below.

The download speeds recorded were those available to a device via a router, therefore representing realistic speeds experienced by users via WiFi, Ethernet connection or other routes. They recorded download tests from at least 100 different Unique Internet Protocol addresses. Results were excluded if the speed test exercises were excessively long or too short, if little data was actually transferred, or if a connection between the server and client was not properly established.

Table 1: Download speeds from 25 Caricom countries that were featured in a global study.

Table 2: The second table shows the download time of a High Definition (HD) movie. The faster the download speed for a specific country, the shorter the time required to download.