Egypt’s broadband internet speed is reported to be among the slowest in the world, ranking 146 out of 150 countries in total, according to Speedtest market report issued on Thursday that measures internet performance around the world.
“[From July to December to 2016,] Egypt ranks 146th out of 150 countries for fixed broadband download speeds and 95th for mobile. In the region of North Africa, Egypt’s fixed broadband was faster than only Libya and the country’s mobile internet was only faster than Algeria and Sudan," the report said.
There are more than 29.84 million internet users in Egypt, marking an internet penetration rate of 37.8 percent. The report explains that this number breaks down into 28.65 million mobile internet subscriptions and 4.6 million for ADSL.
The Greater Cairo area holds almost half of these ADSL subscriptions.
The report added that Egypt’s fixed broadband download speed throughout the final quarter of 2016 was 4.02 Mbps, significantly slower than the country’s average mobile download speed of 7.75 Mbps. It explained that even though these speeds are considered slow, they represent increases of 34 percent and 59 percent, respectively, over the same period last year.
Egypt’s average download speed ranks almost last in North Africa after Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Sudan; for mobile internet speed Egypt follows Tunisia and Morocco and leads Algeria, Sudan and Libya.
Data showed that Cairo has the fastest fixed broadband connections among Egypt’s largest cities with a 6.54 Mbps average download speed. Following Cairo in speeds are Giza, Port Said, Suez and Alexandria. The city with the lowest speed was al-Mahalla el-Kubra at only 2.74 Mbps for all devices.
