More than half of The Gambia’s population has internet access. DataReportal’s Digital 2022 report places The Gambia’s internet penetration rate at 51 percent as of January 2022,
a 27.3 percent improvement over the January 2021 rate.
DataReportal, citing data from Ookla, also reported that Gambian internet users saw median fixed-line internet speeds of 7.2 megabits per second (Mbps), a 1.8 Mbps improvement from a year before.
The government has pursued a number of initiatives to improve internet access. In late June 2019, the Gambia Telecommunications Company (Gamtel), in collaboration with Chinese technology firm Huawei, launched the National Broadband Network (NBN) initiative to improve internet speed and access across the country.
In 2020, the government approved a national broadband policy which aims to ensure “at least 75 percent of homes have affordable access to high speed internet connectivity by 2022.”
The Gambia has one of the highest mobile phone penetration rates in Africa, standing at 167.3 percent of the total population as of January 2022,
though one individual may have more than one subscription and not all phone plans include data use.
Nevertheless, most Gambians who access the internet do so via mobile devices, with less than 20 percent of users subscribing to fixed-line broadband services.
The government launched the country’s first internet exchange point (IXP) in July 2014 to boost the speed and security of internet services across the country, though the IXP runs slowly.
During the coverage period, The Gambia experienced several internet disruptions attributed to technical problems. In line with a broadband policy approved in January 2021, which aimed to find an “alternative backup” to the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable,
Gamtel announced that it would use two international gateways operated by a Senegalese provider.
However, in January 2022, when traffic was rerouted while the ACE cable was undergoing repairs, the backup gateways failed; Gamtel blamed that failure on faulty equipment. This resulted in a nationwide internet blackout lasting more than eight hours.
Gamtel further experienced periodic network disruptions due to vandalism and construction-related mishaps.
During the previous coverage period, The Gambia experienced several internet disruptions, most of which were blamed on technical problems with the ACE cable.
Between January and February 2021, the country saw at least four nationwide disruptions each lasting between two and eight hours.
The Gambian telecommunications regulator, the information and communication technologies (ICT) ministry, and service providers blamed these disruptions on “fishing activities on a rocky area that the cable is laid.”
In June 2020, the government validated a series of policy documents as part of the “ICT for Development Policy 2018–2028,” which aims to increase internet access across the country and bolster the ICT sector by 2024.
The government secured European Union funding to support this project.
Source link : https://freedomhouse.org/country/gambia/freedom-net/2022
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Publish date : 2022-10-18 10:20:42
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