Nigeria’s Internet Speeds Improve, But 5G Performance Disappoints

Nigeria’s internet landscape is undergoing a digital revolution. The 2024 Worldwide Broadband Speed Report by Cable.co.uk paints a promising picture, revealing that Nigeria has climbed to the seventh position in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for download speeds.

With an average download speed of 27.62 Mbps, this marks a significant leap compared to its 133rd place ranking globally in 2023. This is a jump from 133rd to 132nd globally compared to 2023.

Despite the progress, Nigeria remains behind regional leaders like Réunion (63.29 Mbps) and South Africa (42.42 Mbps). The average internet speed across Africa sits at a low 14.99 Mbps, making it the second-slowest region globally.

While some African nations like Eswatini (37.23 Mbps) and Rwanda show promise, others like Sudan (4.02 Mbps) and Ethiopia (4.45 Mbps) fall among the ten slowest worldwide.

The broadband speed tests conducted across 220 countries showed that Nigeria improved in global internet speed ranking, moving up from the 133rd position in 2023 to the 132nd in 2024.

In Africa, Nigeria came behind Réunion, South Africa, Eswatini, Rwanda, Mauritius, and Botswana, which ranked first to sixth in the continent. Réunion topped Sub-Saharan Africa with 63.29 Mbps average Internet speed, while South Africa came second with 42.42 Mbps.

According to the report, the average Internet speed in Africa was 14.99 Mbps making Africa the region with the second-lowest Internet speed globally.“50 countries were measured in the second-slowest region Sub-Saharan Africa, which averaged a download speed of 14.99Mbps overall. All but two of the countries found themselves in the slowest half of the league table.

“Going against the trend somewhat were Réunion (63.29Mbps, 75th), South Africa (42.42Mbps, 114th), and Eswatini (37.23Mbps, 120th). Meanwhile, Sudan (4.02Mbps, 223rd), Central African Republic (4.08Mbps, 222nd), and Ethiopia (4.45Mbps, 221st) all fell among the slowest ten countries in the world for average network speed,” the report stated.

The report indicated that the analysis of around 1.5 billion broadband speed tests worldwide revealed that Iceland has the fastest broadband in the world. The country’s average Internet speed stood at 279.55 Mbps, while Jersey, another Western European country, came second with 273.51 Mbps. An Asian country, Macao emerged the third in the world with 234.74 Mbps internet speed.

According to the report, 35 countries failed to achieve average internet speeds of 10Mbps or greater, the speed deemed by UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom to be the minimum required to cope with the needs of a typical family or small business.

This is down from 48 countries in 2023, 67 countries in 2022, and 94 countries in 2021, indicating significant speed improvements are ongoing in many parts of the world.

Already, Nigeria’s fifth-generation (5G) network has been found to deliver much lower page load speed than 4G on all three services including Facebook, Google and YouTube.

However, a report by Ookla throws a curveball. Their Speedtest Global Index indicates a surprising trend – Nigeria’s 5G network, despite its promise, delivers slower page load times compared to the existing 4G network. This is evident in services like Facebook (47% slower), Google (24% slower), and YouTube (27% slower) on 5G.

Ookla explained that page speed relies on low latency for the best Internet experience. It said page load speed is a critical measure of web browsing experience, which measures how long it takes for a page to load, fully displaying the content on it.

The report said this is directly impacted by latency, which is how quickly a user’s device gets a response after a request has been sent out.

According to Ookla, a typical request on the Internet requires two to five round-trip communications between various entities over different latency-sensitive protocols.

Ookla said one of the promises of 5G is lower latency, which should lead to a faster (lower) page load speed on any page. Consequently, the Speedtest Global Index reported the global average for mobile latency as 27 milliseconds (0.027 seconds) with fixed broadband at 9 ms (0.09 s) in May 2024.

The firm posited that 5G lived up to the latency promise, showing a faster page load speed than 4G on all services in all countries surveyed, including Brazil, Canada, France, India, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain and the United States of America.

However, the report observed that improvement was not the same in all places, with Canada topping the list of fastest page load speed over 5G on all the services we surveyed while South Africa had the slowest 5G page load speed on Google and YouTube of countries reviewed here.