Umniah ranked fastest network in Jordan — Speedtest

AMMAN — Umniah's network was ranked as the fastest network in Jordan, according to Speedtest by Ookla, which came up with the result after testing and verifying hundreds of thousands of consumer-initiated tests.

Around 300,000 consumer-initiated tests in 19 Jordanian cities were verified and checked during the first six months of 2016, Eric Emerson, representative of Speedtest by Ookla, said at a press conference Monday.

"These tests are conducted by the users themselves on various types of devices and operating systems…The analysis of the data showed that Umniah's network is the fastest in Jordan compared to the other operators," he added.

To determine the fastest networks, US-based Ookla, which is a global Internet testing and metrics service, analyses the fastest Internet available in each country, including mobile devices, and ranks the country’s networks by average download speed. 

Umniah's CEO Ziad Shatara said the company will boost investments in the network to meet rising demand on data.

"Last year, Umniah invested $300 million to create new 3G and 4G LTE networks, as well as Broadband Fixed LTE," he said during the press conference.

These investments are expected to reach $500 million by the end of 2017, he added.

Increasing viewership of video content is driving demand on faster Internet services, he indicated. 

By the end of the first quarter of this year, the number of Internet users in Jordan reached almost 6 million and is expected to grow significantly with the launch of Fourth Generation (4G) services.

By the end of March this year, Internet penetration stood at 76 per cent, with some 5.9 million users, compared to 75 per cent at the end of 2014, according to a report by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission.

The report showed that there were 1.9 million Internet subscribers in Jordan by the end of March — an Internet subscription penetration rate of about 25 per cent. 

Of the total Internet subscribers, some 1.5 million were mobile broadband subscribers, followed by ADSL (218,459 subscribers) and WiMax (121,754 subscribers), according to the report.

Speedtest.net is a web service that provides free analysis of Internet access performance metrics, such as connection data rate and latency. It was founded by Ookla in 2006, and is based in Seattle, Washington.