Below today’s marketing threshold

Malaysia’s broadband quality was described as “below today’s applications threshold” in a study conducted by Oxford University and sponsored by Cisco.

The Malaysian Insider has the in-depth story, and it doesn’t make for good reading if you’re a digital marketer.

Malaysia ranked 48 in the study of internet broadband in 66 countries – behind the likes of competing Asian markets such as Hong Kong (3) and Singapore (7) but also ahead of China and Thailand.

Countries like Singapore were listed above Malaysia as having internet speeds “meeting needs of today’s applications” while Hong Kong rated as country which “comfortably enjoy today’s applications”. (Korea and Japan were said to be markets with broadband speeds that were “ready for tomorrow”).

Even as I type out this blog I can remember the frustration I had posting links on my previous A+M Bootleg entry. I linked to two different online campaigns which an agency based in Australia called Spiral did. It was taking forever to load when I was trying to test out the link and I almost dropped the idea of adding the links.

We tend to be rather impatient when we’re online and any page which takes longer than a minute to load is 30 seconds too long. Which is such a shame because the good social media marketing campaigns are meant to be shared but how can I enjoy something after I’ve lost my temper waiting for it to load.

My Hong Kong colleagues enjoy speeds of 100 Mbps but I can’t even access Google sometimes from home on Saturday afternoons.

UPDATE: You’re not going to believe this but while attempting to post this blog entry my wireless connection at the office went offline for at least 30 minutes.