Written by Jean Dennis, Traffic Intergrated Marketing

Cape Town – The somewhat one million tourists and soccer revellers visiting the country during the 2010 Soccer World Cup led to a significant surge in the demand for high quality bandwidth when many of them flocked to popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter and local news site Sports24.co.za, which saw over 1 million unique users during this period.

“Users on the micro-blogging site, Twitter, set a new record on June 14 posting 940 tweets per second in the 30 seconds following Japan’s World Cup win against African team, Cameroon. This is about 200 tweets per second more than the average,” says Henk Kleynhans, CEO and co-founder of premium Wi-Fi hotpot provider, Skyrove.

“At Skyrove, we saw a significant increase in bandwidth demand from our hospitality venue clients as many of the international visitors not only engaged on social networking sites, but communicated with loved ones in their home countries via email and instant messaging and uploaded photos of their fan experience in South Africa.”

“Usage at restaurants, cafes and hotels using Skyrove’s Business-Class Wi-Fi solution was 78% higher during the World Cup. We recently started delivering free Wi-Fi vouchers to users via SMS and ensured that payment with credit card was quick and easy for end-users and hassle-free for busy location owners.”

While emailing and social networking remain the mainstay of web usage, tourists used the internet for sharing photos, swapping music, uploading videos and making Skype calls to their friends and family.

As a result, these tourists were far more demanding of their wireless connectivity and expected Wi-Fi hotspot providers to cope with the increase in bandwidth usage. Skyrove’s hospitality venues were prepared for this by ensuring they offered wireless connectivity that was easy to access, reliable and consistent across the entire property and did not leave guests feeling frustrated with slow, unreliable internet and inconsistent coverage.

Says Kleynhans, “We are confident that Skyrove’s offering for hospitality venues will be able to cope with the ever increasing demand for high-quality Wi-Fi hotspot service following the positive feedback from guests and venue owners during the 2010 World Cup.”

According to statistics published by Speedtest.net, South Africa’s internet speeds are slower than those in Rwanda, Uganda, Tunisia and even Azerbaijan.

The statistics are collated from more than 1.6 billion crowdsourced – that is, done by individual internet users – speedtests done at the website Speedtest.net and through its iPhone and Android apps.

The good news is that South Africa – at an average 2.32 Mbps – is faster than the average African download speed of 1.6 Mbps. The slowest speeds in the world are the be found in Zambia, at an average 0.26 Mbps.

Test your own connection speed at Speedtest.net. Also have a look at Pingtest.net to get a good idea of whether your connection will work for VoIP and gaming.

Note: Speedtest.net & Pingtest.net are owned by Ookla, which was started by entrepreneur, former cab driver, SpeakEasy founder and allround great guy Mike Apgar)