Could Wikipedia be to slow to load in many countries?

I talked to a friend that had been to Swaziland that told me that the only internet provider there in 2007 where MTN (http://www.mtn.com). According to this article "MTN describes itself as 'the leader in telecommunications in Africa and the Middle East'". I checked their website and found this map

http://www.mtn.com/ProductsServices/MTNDataSolutions/Coverage.aspx

that shows the possible mobile internet conection methods that they provided in different parts of Africa and the Middle East. It seems like GPRS is the main solution provided.

These pages shows the speed of the four different solutins provided:

http://www.mtn.com/ProductsServices/MTNDataSolutions/GPRS.aspx
http://www.mtn.com/ProductsServices/MTNDataSolutions/EDGE.aspx
http://www.mtn.com/ProductsServices/MTNDataSolutions/3G.aspx
http://www.mtn.com/ProductsServices/MTNDataSolutions/HSDPA.aspx

The speeds are

  • GPRS: 40kbp/s
  • EDGE: 5*GPRS = 200kbp/s
  • 3G: 384kbp/s
  • HSDPA: ? (up to similar to fixed lines)

I think this company is a provider of fixed landlines as well, but can't find any information about these solutions at that site.

With GPRS solutions for internet connections it seems like my estimate of 50kbps really wasn't that bad =).

Dafer4521:09, 30 December 2009
Edited by author.
Last edit: 00:28, 5 January 2010

I have asked a couple of friends that either are from or has been to some countries for at least a couple of months about their experience of internet connections. I didn't ask about if Wikipedia where slow to load, but tried to get information on how fast a typical internet connections where. The countries and years they where there as well as some comments they gave are listed here. Hope to be able to fill this in as I get more answers:

  • West China (2008)
A lot has happened from 2004 to 2008. In 2008 I think I had an internet connection of 20Mbit, which I also think was the slowest choice available. As long as you visited sites within China the connection speed was very good. But as soon as you tried to access other sites it became very slow. It could take about a minute to login to Facebook. The internet provider where China Telecom (http://en.chinatelecom.com.cn/)
  • Malaysia (citizen)
-
  • Pakistan (citizen)
I don't know what the internet connection speeds are, but I know that it is a problem and some websites load slowly.
  • Kenya (citizen)
At my connection I guess there takes an average of 10 seconds to load a Wikipedia article. Some ISP are ISPKenya (http://www.ispkenya.com), Safaricom (http://www.safaricom.co.ke) and zain.
  • Uganda (2009)
I don't know what the speed where, but sometimes it was quite slow.
  • Swaziland (2007)
I don't know what the internet connection speeds where, but Swaziland only had a single telecom company called MTN.
  • Ecuador (2009)
Dafer4512:26, 31 December 2009

This page provides some information on internet connections around the world. I think the statisics is gathered from people that runs the program on the site so the results are probably biased toward internet connection speeds for people that are interested of knowing their speed (I guess this makes the results higher than the true average), but not sure about this:

http://www.numion.com/YourSpeed3/Graphs.php

Looking at the "surf speed" statistics country by country and using the "past 8 weeks" option to have statistics for most countries there seems to be very many countries where the average is at 100kbps or below when surfing outside the country. Many of the countries in this statistics is also quite well developed so the countries that ain't included in the list probably has much lower speeds.

Would it also make sense to host the local projects on servers within the countries where the languages are spoken as there seems to be much higher trafic speeds within the countries than when accesing material outside?

Dafer4518:12, 3 January 2010

Some information from ISPs in Kenya:

http://www.safaricom.co.ke/index.php?id=789

Safaricom provides broadband connections from 512Kbps to 4Mbps. These are listed as busines solution and only the 512kbps solution is listed as a single user connection so I guess this is a fairly high connection speed in Kenya.

http://www.ispkenya.com/leasedline-services.php

ISP Kenya gives connection speeds ranging from 12Kbps up to 2Mbps+ for their "leased lines" solutions. The 12Kbps is refered to as home/single user solution while the 2Mbps+ is refered to as a solution for a corporate client with a large LAN/WAN connectivity. Once again indicating that the average home user connection probably is very low speed.

Dafer4500:38, 5 January 2010