Issue Seven - Conversations on Technology, Business and Society

What Does this all mean to an Internet User:
A high-bandwidth connection usually has lower latency. HOWEVER,
you can have LOW ping times and be on a modem, or have high
ping times and on a Cable/DSL. Ping time and connection speed are
NOT related! They USUALLY go together (i.e. good bandwidth usually
means better ping times), but they don’t have to be. Case in point is
the Orange Modem which seems to run high speeds with high ping
latency. If one is interested in running heavy downloads only, the
Orange Modem might be a perfect gadget for such a user. If a user
is expecting to spend such long hours on the internet then they might
have to consider using the MTN Jabulani modem.
These statistics show that to an average user, both modems are
ISP BEST DWNLD
MTN JABULANI
ORANGE e160
THE DOUBLE ISSUE | www.pctechmagazine.com
ISP AVRG
UG
ISP AVRG
DOWNLOAD
ISP AVRG
UPLOAD UG AVRG AFRIC AVRG
58.74Mbps 3.35Mbps 2.87Mbps 1.83Mbps 1.81Mbps 1.07
20.35Mbps 5.35Mbps 6.70Mbps 3.31Mbps 1.81Mbps 0.10
On the brighter side Uganda is not really doing bad in terms
of Internet Bandwidth availability and usage. Speedtest.net ranks
Uganda as 82 in the top countries ranked by download speeds. Our
Download speeds average 2.99 Mbps, ahead of Kenya, Rwanda and
even South Africa. South Africa runs at 2.86 and Kenya runs at 2.96
Mbps. The ranking even gets better when it comes to Upload speeds.
Uganda is ranked 42 with 1.67 Mbps. These speeds are still better
than Kenya’s (1.62 Mbps) and South Africa’s( 0.71 Mbps).
More to our surprise South Korea is ranked No.1 with 33.94
Mbps download, and 19.94 Mbps Uploads. This leaves most of us
MTN JABULANI’S BEST RUN ORANGE V6’S BEST RUN
good for the money. The price is almost the same and users might
not even notice the difference in operation as they do normal surfing.
Perhaps before guying one these modems, one needs to know the
area of coverage. The new 3G Modem Internet gadget is limited to
some areas depending on the ISP. This means that one would have
to inquire whether there is good coverage in your area of operation
before purchasing one.
One a wider perspective we also gathered information about
the two ISP’s and their performance over time. The following table
summarizes a comparison of MTN and Orange by Speedtest.net
wondering how the US and UK measure up. The US is ranked 28 with
10.51 Mbps average download speeds and 2.80 Mbps average upload
speeds. On the other hand United Kingdom is ranked 38 with 8.01
Mbps download, and 66 with 1.08 Mbps uploads.
Perhaps for a second we could sit kick back and smile for this
achievement. Uganda has not only excelled in drinking alcohol, we
are averaging better speeds and hence more connected than most
of our sister countries. I guess we should say kudos! to MTN and
Orange, for keeping the Crested Crane fly high and surfing faster on
the waves of the World Wide Web.
SEPTEMEBER - OCTOBER 2010 | PC TECH
FEATURES 41