African internet capacity growth fastest globally

Details: Gabriella Mulligan; Category: Trends & Forecasts; 07 September 2015; 6234 views

International internet capacity growth in Africa is outpacing growth in all other regions, with an compound annual growth over the past five years of 51%.

According to new data from TeleGeography, worldwide international internet capacity growth continues to slow, falling from 41% in 2011 to 31per cent in 2015. Nonetheless, backbone operators deployed 43Tbps of new capacity over the past year, and Africa leads the world in capacity growth.

African internet bandwidth grew 41% between 2014 and 2015, and 51% compounded annually over the last five years, reaching 2.9Tbps.

The region with the second highest growth rate was Oceania, at 47% each year between 2011 and 2015, hitting 2.1Tbps; and in joint-third place were Latin America and the Middle East, each growing 44% per year, to 20.6Tbps and 8.4Tbps respectively.

“New cable builds on the east and west coasts of Africa, including ACE, SEACOM, EASSy, WACS, and others, along with new terrestrial networks, have greatly increased available capacity in the Sub-Saharan region,” said TeleGeography Senior Analyst Patrick Christian. “Meanwhile, content is moving to Africa as CDN services emerge and Google Global Cache servers are installed, tempering demand for long-haul capacity.”

In spite of new deployments worldwide, internet growth rates have slowed in all regions over the past five years; with this trend particularly apparent in Africa. “Despite the continent recording strong capacity growth between 2011 and 2015, it was a far cry from the 93% compound annual growth rate seen between 2006 and 2010,” TeleGeography said.

Differences are also felt between growth rates in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa, with North African capacity growing at a much slower pace over the past five years. Bandwidth connected to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa rose at 66% per year, while North African internet capacity grew at 43% per year.