Current state of the Internet in Belarus at the end of the first quarter of 2015

At present moment there is necessity to give a brief description of current technical state of the Internet in Belarus for a wide audience of Internet users, as well as for potential foreign investors who will intend to invest in Belarusian ICT sphere. Hereinafter two ratings from independent international experts are presented.
1). Evaluation of the Republic of Belarus and other countries with respect to access to the Internet according to the quarterly reports of the company Akamai Technologies at the end of last year.
Akamai Technologies Company experts has shared the opinion that that the average Internet connection speed was fell to 2.554 Mbit / sec in Belarus in the third quarter of 2013, and that the Republic was one of the worst positions in Europe. However, in the next Akamai Technologies survey, held for the third quarter of 2014, the development dynamics of broadband access to Internet in Belarus, took the second place worldwide with growth index of 38%. What else has been particularly notable in this report that is the fact that Indonesia became a leader, in which the growth rate of broadband was “incredible” 534%. Japan closed the list of countries in which there was an increase broadband penetration of the Internet with plus (0.5%). In addition, a number of countries demonstrated negative dynamics, for example in Austria (- 0.1%) and Chile (- 43%).

At the end of last year, Akamai Technologies experts have noted that the average access speed to the global network of the world then was 4.5 Mbit/s. The highest rate was recorded in the Republic of South Korea (25.3 Mbit/s). In this country, the annual growth was 14%. The top ten also included Hong Kong (16.3 Mbit/s), Japan (15 Mbit/s), Switzerland (14.5 Mbit/s), Sweden (14.1 Mbit/s), the Netherlands (14 Mbit/s), Ireland (13.9 Mbit/s), Latvia (13.4 Mbit/s), Czech Republic (12.3 Mbit/s) and Singapore (12.2 Mbit/s). Thus, the highest average peak velocity was recorded in Hong Kong with the value of 87.7 Mbit/s. However, the global average peak velocity was 26.9 Mbit/s, which was 3.2 times lower than in the Special Administrative Region of China. In addition, according to this parameter the whole world demonstrated an increase of 38% in comparison with the data of the third quarter of 2013.

2). Evaluation of the Republic of Belarus according to regularly test trial for the provision of Internet access services telecommunications operators around the world performed the company Ookla Speedtest
In this article section the place of Belarus in the world rankings will be pointed out according to such indicators as speed of loading data from the network and the data rate to the global Internet, estimated by Ojkla Sppedtest specialists at the end of the first quarter of 2015. This company, using the daily measurements of these parameters for the past several years, constantly ranks these data parameters, coming from 200 countries.
According to the latest data measurements received after the first quarter of 2015 the Ojkla Sppedtest company’s specialists arrived at the conclusion that average download speeds of the network in G8 countries was 30.5 Mbit/s, the European Union – 29.5 Mbit/s, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development – 28.9 Mbit/s and in OPEC – 25.6 Mbit/s ( http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/ ). According to another parameter, i.e. average speed of data transmission into Global network: G8 – 12.5 Mbit/s, OPEC – 14.4 Mbit/s, EU – 10.1 Mbit/s, OECD – 9.6 Mbit/s (http://www.netindex.com/upload/allcountries/ ).
Table 1 reflects the achievements of ten leaders in the World related the speeds from/into Internet, as well as some other countries, first of all territorial neighbors of the Republic of Belarus, as well as from the CEE and CIS region, where the data achieved a year ago are pointed out in brackets.
Table 1. Comparison of the download data speed from Internet and the speed of data transfer into Internet in Belarus and some other countries.
Country Speed of download data from Internet Mbit/s
(February 2014) Country’s position by downloading data speed from
(February 2014) Data transfer speed into Internet Mbit/s
(February 2014) Country’s position by data transfer speed into
(February 2014)
Belarus 15.36 (7.56) 63 (87) 11.98 (5.43) 37 (50)
Romania 72.81 (57.60) 3 (3) 36.77 (28.54) 11 (7)
Lithuania 48.26 (40.25) 10 (6) 44.68 (33.38) 5 (5)
Latvia 47.26 (33.90) 11 (14) 44.20 (25.30) 6 (11)
Moldova 42.10 (30.69) 18 (17) 35.86 (28.24) 12 (9)
Bulgaria 36.87 (28.31) 23 (18) 124.03 (7.89) 17 (15)
Estonia 32.27 (24.10) 29 (25) 18.36 (13.22) 23 (20)
Hungary 35.48 (23.49) 26 (27) 10.84 (6.97) 43 (39)
Czech Republic 28.72 (22.97) 37 (29) 16.22 (11.49) 25 (23)
Russia 28.66 (20.81) 38 (33) 27.41 (18.70) 15 (14)
Slovakia 27.16 (20.42) 41 (35) 13.12 (9.09) 33 (30)
Ukraine 26.79 (19.05) 44 (39) 23.82 15.09 18 (18)
Poland 24.30 (18.03) 47 (41) 8.70 (5.81) 52 (46)
China 26.80 (16.94) 43 (42) 12.60 (7.25) 34 (38)
Slovenia 23.02 (14.60) 48 (49) 8.30 (6.12) 56 (43)
Mongolia 17.32 (14.39) 58 (50) 15.67 (11.21) 28 (24)
Kazakhstan 19.06 (13.11) 54 (58) 18.37 (11.12) 22 (25)
Tajikistan 12.68 (12.88) 83 (59) 10.25 (9.44) 45 (29)
Vietnam 17.58 (12.32) 56 (61) 14.94 (10.96) 30 (26)
Georgia 13.92 (12.26) 69 (62) 12.77 (12.62) 34 (21)
Macedonia 17.92 (10.25) 55 (69) 8.26 (5.24) 57 (52)
Armenia 12.63 (10.12) 82 (73) 9.24 (7.92) 50 (36)
Kyrgyzstan 13.01 (9.03) 80 (78) 12.43 (8.35) 36 (33)
Serbia 12.22 (7.78) 85 (84) 2.42 (1.89) 146 (131)
Croatia 11.17 (7.22) 90 (90) 3.86 (2.41) 120 (113)
Azerbaijan 5.62 (4.27) 147 (133) 4.05 (2.32) 116 (122)
Uzbekistan 3.72 (2.74) 170 (167) 3.64 (2.35) 127 (118)
G8 30.5 = 12.5 =
Singapore 114.26 (59.90) 1 (2) 93.76 (46.06) 2 (2)
Honkong 102.03 (72.56) 2 (1) 96.87 (59.97) 1 (1)
Japan 67.91 4 55.15 3
Saint Pierre Miquelon 63.75 5 11.61 38
South Korea 61.99 (49.79) 6 (4) 54.58 (43.01) 4 (3)
Sweden 59.03 7 32.00 14
The Netherlands 52.15 8 21.64 20
Norway 52.04 9 39.85 8
Germany 30.50 32 4.63 98
USA 34.52 27 11.01 42
Great Britain 30.80 31 7.76 61

As it can be seen from the data that Table 1 contains, Belarus was able to significantly improve their position on both counts over the past year. Thus, according to speed of downloading data from the network, the country moved forward by 24 positions, and according to data transfer speed into the Internet, the country moved forward by 13 positions. It’s a pretty good result. Besides, there are indicators marked with grey background in the Table 1; these are indicators of the countries where results of Belarus are ahead of.
Nevertheless, Belarus is a far cry from the Internet leaders. And if such a situation, in general, is clear due to substantial differences in technological and economic development between the world leaders and our Republic, from the other hand, Belarusian government authorities need to think in particular about the fact that such countries as Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Moldova are still ahead of our country in absolute terms by far 3 times, and Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Russia and Slovakia – about 2 times. Therefore, there is a lot of work that must be done by the Ministry of Communications and Informatization of the Republic of Belarus to narrow that gap in the nearest future.

For information. Hereinafter Table 2 and 3 will be presented, where the speed of downloading data from Global network and the data transfer speed into the Internet in various cities (towns) of Belarus will be compared (2), as well as data for the leading Internet service providers of our country (3) over the past year.

Table 2. Comparison of the data download speed from and the speed of data transfer into Internet in various Belarusian cities (towns) at current moment (03.2015) and year ago.
City/town Speed of download data from Internet Mbit/s
(February 2014) Town position in country by data download speed
(February 2014) Data transfer speed into Internet Mbit/s
(February 2014) Town position in country by data transfer speed into
(February 2014)
Belarus 15.36 (7.56) = 11.98 (5.43) =
Мinsk 17.25 (9.05) 3 (1) 14.53 (6.91) 3 (2)
Bobruisk 5.74 (6.49) 12 (2) 2.81 (4.81) 11 (3)
Pinsk 10.03 (5.27) 7 (3) 29.86? (13.61?) 1 (1)
Gomel 12.88 5.21 4 (4) 13.53 (4.0) 4 (4)
Borisov 5.72 (5.03) 13 (5) 2.23 (1.24) 12 (9)
Polotsk 9.63 (5.99) 8 (6) 8.34 (2.41) 6 (5)
Vitebsk 10.19 (4.14) 6 (7) 6.55 (1.39) 8 (7)
Novopolotsk 7.63 (4.12) 11 (8) 4.01 (0.71) 9 (11)
Brest 25.70 (3.98) 1 (9) 14.70 (1.41) 2 (6)
Мogilev 11.70 (3.88) 5 (10) 7.75 (1.35) 7 (8)
Коbrin n/a (3.66) n/a (11) n/a (0.68) n/a (12)
Оrsha 5.10 (3.27) 14 (12) 2.16 (0.51) 13 (14)
Сmorgon n/a (3.21) n/a (13) n/a 0.68 n/a 13
Lida 8.95 (3.11) 9 (14) 2.11 (0.76) 14 (10)
Grodno 18.19 2 12.51 5

Таble 3. Comparison of the data loading speed and the speed of network data transfer into the Internet between the leading Internet providers in Belarus.
Internet provider Speed of data download from Internet Mbit/s
(February 2014) Provider position by data download speed from (February 2014) Data transfer speed into Internet Mbit/s
(February 2014) Provider position by data transfer speed into
(February 2014)
ALFA TELECOM s.r.o 38.84 (40.26) 1 (1) 45.97 (52.63) 1 (1)
Alternative Digital Network 38.74 (32.50) 2 (2) 42.59 (35.60) 3 (2)
FLYNET.BY 23.46 (29.89) 5 (3) 24.35 (31.01) 6 (3)
Niks 21.54 (26.66) 7 (4) 23.89 (27.05) 7 (4)
МТS (Mobile TeleSystems JLLC) 23.41 (17.82) 6 (5) 20.86 (15.83) 9 (6)
PE NETBERRY 29.08 (14.48) 3 (6) 29.31 (17.72) 4 (5)
Belinfonet Ltd. 14.36 (9.65) 9 (7) 14.22 (5.55) 11 (10)
Qline 11.08 (9.51) 13 (8) 27.91 (14.75) 5 (7)
«Unibel» n/a (9.29) n/a (9) n/a (12.47) n/a (8)
«Garant» 19.08 (8.60) 9 (10) 22.33 (10.54) 8 (9)
Telecom Media Systems JLLC 8.92 (7.33) 15 (11) 3.93 (3.87) 15 (11)
IP TelCom 10.70 (5.52) 13 (12) 8.56 (2.32) 13 (12)
FE VELCOM 11.52 (4.53) 11 (13) 9.17 (2.16) 12 (13)
Beltelecom 11.24 (4.48) 12 (14) 5.66 (1.38) 14 (14)
BeST CJSC n/a (2.39) n/a (15) n/a (0.98) n/a (15)
ELNET 13.08 10 16.19 10
WIKILINK 26.79 4 42.93 2

V. Shkel, Head of Business Development Department