• Opensignal has published its first ever Global Network Excellence Index.
• It looks at the quality of a country’s network infrastructure versus its peers. 
• While SA is the highest ranking African nation, it is 64th globally, according to Opensignal.

As connectivity continues to be an issue in South Africa, especially in ensuring that all segments of our society has access to the internet, it may be interesting to know where our country stacks up against the rest of the world.

It is with this in mind that Opensignal, an analytics company focused on network performance, released its first ever Global Network Excellence Index.

The company defines the Index as a, “comprehensive ranking system that evaluates mobile markets worldwide, providing insights into infrastructure readiness, user experience, and ability to support future digital demands.”

Here it looked specifically at four key metrics to create the Index – 4G/5G Availability, Excellent Consistent Quality, 4G download speeds, and 5G download speeds. Using this data, an overall ranking was created, with 137 countries in total being ranked.

“This ranking serves as a valuable resource for network operators, policymakers, regulators, and consumers, offering insights into which markets are truly future-proof, ensuring seamless digital experiences in an increasingly connected world,” it added.

Looking specifically at South Africa’s ranking, perhaps unsurprisingly we are the top ranked African nation in the Index. While that may be a notable achievement and a testament to the competitive landscape of networks operating locally, compared to other countries, SA ranks 64th overall.

“The speed component is further broken down into the average speeds measured while on 4G and 5G networks. 5G download speeds are included in the markets where 5G has been widely commercially deployed,” Opensignal points regarding the Index.

As such, we fall just within the top half of countries that were ranked.

Diving into the different metrics, our best performing one is 5G download speed, which is far superior than our 4G download speed. This is intriguing given how much investment has been put into 4G infrastructure locally compared to that of 5G. In terms of Excellent Consistent Quality, we are pretty much smack dab in the middle of the rankings at 69.

While Opensignal does not offer granular detail for each country, this likely means that the local network experience for South Africans wavers between the two extremes of excellent and poor.

It therefore looks like there is still plenty of work to do to improve the overall network performance and consistency locally, and SA may be top on the African continent, but we are still some ways off the global leaders.

You can view the report for yourself in full here.

[Image – Photo by Planet Volumes on Unsplash]