Internet day: in two years, fixed connection speed has tripled in Argentina

The speed of the fixed Internet connection in Argentina has tripled in the last two years, comparing the measurements for the fourth quarter of 2018 and the same period of 2016 with an average of 16 Mbps, announced today. Secretariat for Modernization. Remember the celebration of the day of the Internet.

In 2016, the speed was about 5 Mbps and in 2015 about 4 Mbps; while projections for the end of the current year estimate that an average of 20 Mbps will be reached.

Even in this case, it is far from the world average, which, according to the company Ookla (owner of Speedtest, a site to check the speed of a connection, and which is one of the standards of the Industry) is around 58.6 Mbps,
according to the estimates of April. Thus, Argentina ranks 78th in the index established by the company, which estimates the average connection in the country to nearly 26 Mbps. Singapore is the country with the best fixed broadband connection in the world, with an average connection rate of 197 Mbps.

The type of connection over the years

When explaining the multiple causes that have led to this improvement, in the official dependence, they said in recent years that "the adoption of better quality connections has progressed: cable modem, fiber optic and wireless connection".

On the one hand, the exponential increase in connections carrying higher speed allows users to access the Internet faster.

In perspective, while in 2008, 95% of connections (3,294,352 at the time) were "narrow band" (low bandwidth), at the end of last year, only 0.2% of total from 8,473,655 they still used this technology.

For its part, the cable modem connection increases by about 10% per year (10% from 2015 to 2016, 12% from 2016 to 2017 and 8% from 2017 to 2018).

The advancement of the national fiber optic network has also had an impact on increasing speed: in 2015, the Federal Internet Plan had 17 connected sites and only 6,500 kilometers of fiber.

Currently, in Argentina, 8.4 million households have access to the Internet, which represents a penetration of 61.4%. Over the last 3 years, access has increased on average by 7% per year.

"The challenge is for all Argentines to be connected to the Internet and be prepared for the future economy, where innovation and digital will play a fundamental role in creating jobs," said the president. Head of the Cabinet of Ministers and Secretary of the Government for Modernization.

"That is why it is necessary for governments to provide answers to ensure adaptation to technological changes and offer opportunities and better work," concluded the manager.

A visit to the museum during the Internet day

The Internet day is celebrated worldwide with more than 5,000 million active users and a marked growth in the consumption of videos, streaming applications and "on-demand" series, celebration at which will join
Museum of Computer Science of Argentina with a tribute to the first online communications.

Traffic on the mobile Internet will quadruple in 2021, with the transmission of video games and online games that will be multiplied by five, according to data published by the technology company Vertiv.

The smartphone becomes the protagonist of this era, positioning itself more and more as an access tool since 52% of the total population accesses content from their mobile device.

An image very different from that of the first years of Internet communication, where there was, for example, "the first television adapters to see emails or web pages," said Carlos Chiodini, president of the Museum of Informatics, Telam the Argentine Republic.

A tribute to these elements is the one that we can see in the exhibition "Revolution", Fridays and Saturdays from 16h to 20h, at the Museum of Computer Science, located at Marcelo T. de Alvear 740 from the city of Buenos Aires.

Why is it celebrated today?

The origin of the celebration of tomorrow, which will have different activities around the world, dates back to the initiative of the Association of Internet Users (aui.es) in 2005 in Spain and, a year later, the United Nations General Assembly declared May 17 as the World Day of the Information Society.

The date was chosen because on May 17, 1865, the International Union of Communications (ITU) was founded, with the signing in Paris of the first international telegraph agreement.

"We are investing steadily in the development of domestic fiber optic networks, and we currently have more than 600 optical fiber manufacturing or deployment sites, which will allow us to evolve the quality of the Internet for all its users, "said Ariel Graizer, president of the Argentine Internet Chamber (Cabase).

The director said that the "main and big challenge" they face "is that effective competition between all Internet players in the country is real and that all operators can provide all the services".

To this end, he added the need for "clear and sustainable rules over time, such as, for example, the responsibility of technology intermediaries".

"With the increasing consumption of video and multimedia content worldwide, social applications for live broadcast, on-demand movies and series, television programs, online games and other services" On the Top "(OTT), Network traffic is growing steadily year after year, making the Internet infrastructure a vital resource," said Graizer.

He added that this phenomenon explains "to a large extent the significant growth of traffic within the national network of Internet interconnection points" of Cabase during the last 12 months.

At that time, the Chamber announced that, through its "31 Regional Regional Interchange Points (IXPs)" constituting its national network, it generated data traffic in excess of 480 Gbps (gigabits per second) on average. April, which posted sustained growth of more than 41% last year. "

Telam Agency