Malta lags far behind in broadband quality, study shows
David Darmanin The results of a wide-ranging study show Malta lagging far behind other countries on the quality of its broadband connection, classifying the island as unfit to even cater for “the needs of the day.”
The study, sponsored by communications technology multinational Cisco, was carried out by MBA students from the Said Business School at the University of Oxford and the University of Oviedo’s Department of Applied Economics.
The research aimed to deliver new insights into who the global broadband leaders are by combining data for each country’s broadband penetration; download and upload speeds; and latency: with which an index dubbed Broadband Quality Score (BQS) was assigned for each of the 66 countries, ranking Malta in 40th place.
With a BQS of 66, South Korea tops the chart, followed by Japan at 64 and Sweden at 56. At the bottom of the list is Nigeria at 8, followed by Kenya at 12 and Egypt at 19. Malta scored 33, in line with Chile.
BQS results of the countries under review were pigeonholed as nations that are “ready for tomorrow”, “comfortably enjoying today’s applications”, “meeting needs of today’s expectations”, “below today’s applications threshold” – in which Malta is featured, and “leapfrog opportunity” – which included only four countries: India, Egypt, Kenya and Nigeria.
Data for download and upload speeds was collected from speedtest.net, which ranks Malta in 55th place for its download speed – 3.46Mb/s and 117th for its upload speed – at a meager 0.38Mb/s. This may very well indicate that Malta’s BQS could have scored much lower had it not been for the reasonable broadband penetration here.
“39 of the 66 countries reviewed have a BQS above the threshold required to deliver a consistent quality of experience for the most common web applications today, such as social networking, streaming low-definition video, web communications and sharing small files such as photos and music,” an Oxford University statement said. At 40th place, Malta barely makes it to fit into this category.
Only the top nine out of the first 39 countries, namely South Korea, Japan, Sweden, Lithuania, Bulgaria, The Netherlands, Denmark and Romania were found to have the broadband quality required for future web applications, such as high definition Internet TV viewing and high-quality video communications (such as home telepresence) that will become mainstream in the next three to five years.
When the same study was conducted last year, only Japan fit the bill as the country whose broadband quality is “ready for tomorrow’s needs.”
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