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Investigating Broadband Performance in South Africa 2013

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Investigating Broadband Performance in South Africa 2013 Investigating Broadband Performance in South Africa 2013 Marshini Chetty, Srikanth Sundaresan, Sachit Muckaden, Nick Feamster, and Enrico Calandro Towards Evidence-based ICT Policy and Regulation Volume TWO Research ICT Africa Research ICT Africa fills a strategic gap in the development of a sustainable information society and network knowledge economy by building the ICT policy and regulatory research capacity needed to inform effective ICT governance in Africa. The network was launched with seed funding from the IDRC and seeks to extend its activities through national, regional and continental partnerships. The establishment of the Research ICT Africa (RIA) network emanates from the growing demand for data and analysis necessary for the appropriate and visionary policy required to catapult the continent into the information age. Through network development RIA seeks to build an African knowledge base in support of ICT policy and regulatory design processes, and to monitor and review policy and regulatory developments on the continent. The research arising from a public interest agenda is made available in the public domain, and individuals and entities from the public and private sector and civil society are encouraged to use it for teaching, further research or to enable them to participate more effectively in national, regional and global ICT policy formulation and governance. This research is made possible by the significant funding received from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Ottawa, Canada. The network members express their gratitude to the IDRC for its support. The network is based in Cape Town under the directorship of Dr. Alison Gillwald. RIA members are Dr. Augustin Chabossou (Benin), Dr. Patricia Makepe (Botswana), Dr. Pam Zahonogo (Burkina Faso), Dr. Olivier Nana Nzèpa (Cameroon), Prof. Dr. Arsene Kouadio (Cote d'Ivoire), Dr. Lishan Adam (Ethiopia), Dr. Godfred Frempong (Ghana), Dr. Tim Waema (Kenya), Francisco Mabila (Mozambique), Dr. Christoph Stork (Namibia), Dr. Alison Gillwald (South Africa), Prof. Dr. Ike Mowete (Nigeria), Albert Nsengiyumva (Rwanda), Prof Dr Abdoulaye Diagne (Senegal), Dr. Bitrina Diyamet (Tanzania), Dr. Farouk Kamoun (Tunisia), Dr. Nora Mulira (Uganda), Shuller Habeenzu (Zambia). This research is made possible by the significant funding received from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Ottawa, Canada. Series Editor: Alison Gillwald Executive Summary Although broadband penetration is increasing in South Africa, particularly on mobiles, little is known empirically about the performance of fixed or mobile broadband in the country. This lack Our study serves as of evidence is significant since monitoring broadband performance is key for ensuring South a model of how to Africa is meeting national broadband goals as set forth in the draft National Broadband policy. measure Measuring broadband performance, also known as quality of service in policy terms, will help ensure consumers are getting what they paid for, that they receive a reliable service, and that broadband regulators can make informed decisions. To address this gap in our knowledge, we present the performance on a results of a pilot study of both fixed and mobile broadband connections in the country. larger scale in Through our study, we measured broadband performance across all nine provinces of South South Africa Africa and examined 15 ISPs using both measurements collected from online speed tests, a speed test app for mobile phones, and special router boxes that we deployed. We have three key findings from our study data: (1)Consumers are not getting the speeds that ISPs are promising them. Unlike in more developed nations such as the U.K. and the U.S. where ISPs are closely matching the speeds they promise to deliver to consumers, our data suggests consumer speeds are below what is advertised. (2)Mobile broadband connections are outperforming fixed broadband on speed although the performance on mobile is more variable. From our comparison of mobile and fixed line connectivity, we found mobile connections achieve far higher speeds. However, our data suggests that fixed line connections tend to be more consistent in their speed ranges. When comparing similar types of mobile and fixed service plans in terms of speeds promised, mobile still outperforms fixed line connections. This also stands in contrast to more developed countries where the fixed line infrastructure tends to deliver faster speeds than mobile broadband offerings. (3)Speed is not the only limiting factor on performance; rather latency also plays a huge part in affecting the consumers’ broadband experience. Our study analysis suggests that because of the way ISPs connect to or “peer” with each other, network traffic does not always take a direct route to its destination. This increases the latency for many websites and online services. In other cases, popular websites and services host their content on servers that are geographically distant from South Africa, again increasing the latency to these sites. In these cases, even with a higher speed, latency is the bottleneck for good performance. Given our study results, we make two key recommendations based on this data: (1) Broadband performance should be monitored regularly so that policymakers can make informed decisions. It is clear that continuously monitoring broadband performance using a variety of measurement techniques and producing annual broadband quality of service reports will assist policymakers in making informed decisions about the national broadband agenda. (2) The government should facilitate private investment in local server infrastructure and services to reduce the detrimental effects of factors such as latency on the end user experience. To overcome the effects of latency in particular, the government could facilitate and encourage companies to move content closer to South Africa and to improve ISP peering arrangements so that network traffic takes the shortest or most direct path to its destination where possible. Our contribution in this paper is the first systematic study of broadband quality of service in South Africa that can serve as a model of monitoring broadband performance on a larger scale in this country and in other similar developing country contexts. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Measuring Broadband Performance 2 Why Measure Broadband Performance? 2 Broadband in South Africa 3 Data Collection 4 Metrics and Measurement Methods 4 Data Collection: Deployment and Tools 8 Challenges 9 Limitations 10 Results 10 Fixed-Line & Mobile Broadband Performance on Access Links 10 What Other Factors Affect Performance? 15 Discussion and Recommendations 20 Conclusion 21 Bibliography 1 Measuring Broadband Performance: The Case of South Africa Introduction Despite increasing broadband penetration in South Africa (International Telecommunication Union 2012; ResearchICTAfrica and Intelecon 2012) on fixed line, fixed “wireless”, or 3G dongles, and No systematic study of wireless (cellular) networks (Stork, Calandro et al. 2013), we know fairly little about broadband fixed and mobile performance in the country. Yet, broadband performance and cost (Chetty, Banks et al. 2012)] affect broadband adoption and use (Chen, Dhananjay et al. 2010; Wyche, Smyth et al. 2010) which, broadband in turn, can affect the developmental progress associated with the Internet (World Economic performance has been Forum 2013). For this reason, monitoring broadband performance is a necessity. Measuring conducted in South broadband performance can help regulators ensure that consumers are getting what they paid for, Africa that their connections are reliable, and that broadband polices are created by informed decisions (Ofcom 2011; Federal Communications Commission 2012; Ofcom 2012). Despite the need for monitoring broadband performance, to our knowledge, no systematic study of fixed and mobile broadband performance has been conducted in South Africa. In this paper, we address this gap in our knowledge. We set out to gather empirical evidence about broadband performance, commonly referred to as quality of service in policy terms, on fixed and mobile connections in South Africa. When we refer to mobile, we refer to Internet access via a mobile phone or using a 3G “dongle” (or 3G USB modem). We explore the following questions: • Does each user on a fixed or mobile broadband connection experience the performance advertised by the Internet service provider (ISP)? • Is the broadband performance that users achieve consistent? • Are there other factors affecting the performance that users experience? To answer these questions, we conducted a pilot study where we deployed custom home network routers in 16 testing sites across all nine provinces and 15 service providers in South Africa. In this deployment, we collected regular speed tests (or throughput) and latency data over the period February to April 2013. In addition, we collected data on mobile broadband performance from several hundred mobile phones, and fixed mobile data from two 3G “dongles” over several weeks. To augment our datasets, we used data collected from fixed and mobile devices using a custom speedtest.net tool hosted by the South African website MyBroadband (MyBroadband) during the same time period. The findings from our data are both surprising and significant. First, unlike in more developed countries (Sundaresan, de Donato et al. 2011; Ofcom 2012), many users appear to be receiving broadband speeds that are far lower than what their Internet Service Providers
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