Page 92 - SAMENA Trends - February-March 2021

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

the region but was overtaken in some
markets such as KSA, Qatar, UAE, Oman.
The reason being that Cloudflare caches
were not deployed to few key operators
in the region. While Zain group has been
very welcoming with Cloudflare as well as
Ooredoo group, bigger MNOs such as STC
in KSA or Etisalat have not decided to set
up partnerships yet.

Country % of local CDN cache
Bahrain 81%
Egypt 4%
Jordan 75%
Kuwait 85%
Oman 31%
Qatar 44%
Chart 1: Average latency to AWS Bahrain, Azure UAE, Cloudflare and DigitalOcean Amsterdam in 2019 Saudi Arabia 15%
Fortunately, since 2019 the situation has improved considerably for both AWS and Azure Turkey 23%
clouds. UAE 48%
UK 80%
Germany 78%
France 90%
Table 1: Percentage of traffic going to local
datacenters of Cloudflare CDN

As we can see in the charts above, the
latencies for countries which do not have
local caches are more than twice as slow
as countries with a high percentage of
cache access. The reason being that users
with no local cache access are sent to EU-
based datacenters. This is an unfortunate
situation in the region as it has a big
impact on the user experience. In other
regions such as the EU the lack of local
CDN cache does not pose a big impact
on the user experience as the users who
Chart 2: Average latency to AWS Bahrain, Azure UAE, Cloudflare and DigitalOcean Amsterdam in 2021
do not have access to local cache can be
and UAE which interconnected very well, Not all users in those countries benefited routed efficiently to neighbouring countries
the rest of the countries had latencies to equally though. Some operators invested which are geographically not very far and
the new datacenters in the Middle East that heavily in improving the latencies, most therefore the latency impact is minimal.
were similar to those in Europe. This meant notably Ooredoo (in Qatar, Kuwait and
that to truly offer great user experience Oman), STC (Kuwait and KSA), Omantel Conclusion
across the region CDNs such as Cloudflare and Turkcell. The situation in the region has improved
had to be utilized. considerably since 2019 and it is the new
While there were plenty of improvements data centers and the partnerships with
The biggest improvements were for the AWS and Azure datacenters, carriers and operators that have enabled
experienced for users in Qatar, Kuwait, not much can be said with Cloudflare. this for the users. The biggest gains were
Oman and Saudi Arabia. The latencies to Cloudflare, being one of the most popular observed with AWS and Azure datacenters
the new datacenters in UAE and Bahrain CDNs in the world, hosting over 10% of which will push more local companies
from those countries decreased by more websites worldwide did not experience to host with those platforms and enable
than 100%. similar gains. Noted, Cloudflare already consumers to have an improved user
has one of the best low latency offers in experience.

92 FEB-MAR 2021