Broadband quality in PK: Download speeds are not the only problem


Posted on December 8, 2014  /  1 Comments

A recent article on the Tribune compares Pakistan’s “poor performance” to global averages in download speeds for broadband. The piece is based on Ookla’s most recent Net Index (which is calculated on a rolling 30-day average). While some arguments are legit, the author fails to realise a few things:

1. Speed it not the only metric that affects quality. Depending on what the Internet is being used for latency (or RTT, round trip time) plays an important and sometimes critical role. In fact RTT, which is the time taken for a packet to traverse the network, reach the destination sever and return to the client is extremely important for browing, which is perhaps one of the most common uses of the Internet. According to LIRNEasia research (network diagnostics carried out in March 2014), we found that Pakistan had very high latencies of approximately 500 ms in the international domain (a server in the US).

2. The comparison to global averages is perhaps unfair given the state of broadband in developed economies vs. developing economies.

3. Pakistan’s average download speeds are around 3 Mbps (according to the Net Index and LIRNEasia research) which is in fact close to 80% of what was advertised. This isn’t really all that bad as per general standards including that of the Sri Lankan regulator’s benchmark – 70% of advertised speed. This clearly points to the other broadband parameters that cause poor broadband quality of service for its users.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is in the process of developing QoS measures. Let’s hope download speed isn’t given more prominence that what is actually necessary when assessing the quality of service experienced by users.

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