The Alliance For Affordable Internet (A4AI) has ranked Nigeria 13 on its Internet Affordability Drivers Index (ADI) out of 58 countries that were studied.
This is according to the “2017 Affordability Report’’ released by A4A1 in Lagos on Tuesday.
The report said that the ADI assessed the extent to which countries had implemented a number of factors that could lower the overall cost structure for broadband.
It said that there were a range of policy and regulatory steps that countries could take to force down broadband prices and effectively tackle the affordability barrier to access.
The report said that this year, Latin American countries once again dominated the top of ADI rankings.
The report put Colombia at 72.87 per cent, Mexico 71.47 per cent, Peru 70.84 per cent, Malaysia 68.65 per cent and Costa Rica 67.4 per cent.
According to the report, all ranking within the top five on the ADI, all experienced an above average increase in their ADI score from 2016 to 2017.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that sixth to the twelfth positions before Nigeria included Ecuador at 63.81 per cent, Argentina 63.62 per cent, Mauritius 61.7 per cent, and Turkey 61.13 per cent.
Brazil 60.78 per cent, Morocco 57.75 per cent, and Jamaica 56.88 per cent.
The report showed that Nigeria at the 13th position had an ADI of 56.58 per cent.
It said that for the second year running, Colombia was ranked top in the ADI due to the increase in available international bandwidth, improvements in competition policy.
Columbia also expanded access to under-served areas through programmes such as the Plan Vive Digital.
It said that the country had recently inaugurated a new programme to subsidise the cost of both data and devices for those living in poverty and those who had never been online before.
According to the report, the ADI does not measure actual broadband prices, nor does it tell how affordable broadband is in a given country.
“Instead, it scores countries across two main policy groups, of which is infrastructure (the extent to which ICT infrastructure has been deployed as well as the policy framework in place to encourage future infrastructure expansion).
“It also scores countries on access (current broadband adoption rates, as well as the policy framework in place to enable equitable access).
“Each country is awarded a score out of 100 per cent across a range of variables within each grouping, and is then ranked against the other countries in the ADI.
“Higher scores indicate the existence of a combination of factors which contribute to lower the cost structure for broadband provision and eventually lower prices.
“High ADI scores are correlated with reduced broadband costs, both for industry and for consumers.’’(NAN)