13 Feb 2025
We’ve redesigned the country reports in Pulse, so that they’re more curated, easier to use, and can be understood by a wider audience. Our goal is to help people use country reports to explore Internet health, resilience, and development at country or territory level.
What's New
Highlights on every country page
In the previous version, some countries had a paragraph of context-setting text at the top of the page, but this wasn’t done with a consistent purpose. It was also static text, so it easily became outdated. The new reports have highlights that use live data from the page, and are written in plain language, so they’re ready for reports, presentations, or advocacy arguments. Countries and territories with a lot of available data will have a bank of 8, and up to 5 will be displayed each time the page loads. They’re selected randomly.
New data types for better storytelling
This version is informed by user research. We learned that our community needs a country report that can be a talking tool about Internet development, and that some data types needed more context.
Examples include:
- Basic country information is now included in a sidebar view. Population, UN country grouping (where relevant), and income level make it easier for countries to be cross-compared.
- Internet penetration is now augmented with the ITU’s latest available data for usage by gender and rural versus urban. We also added broadband penetration, average download speeds, affordability, and 4G/5G availability. The goal is to help tell stories that support access to quality, affordable Internet for all.
- Including the top ISPs in a country, to augment the rating we assign for market competition.
- Added numbers of data centers, so it’s easier to look for connections between data center development, IXP numbers, and the availability of quality, affordable Internet.
- In addition to showing the number of shutdowns in the previous 12 months, we’ve used our own Netloss calculator to embed the estimated cost of a 1-day shutdown in each country or territory.
- We added the UN digital public services rating and the UN’s Global Cybersecurity Index as added measures that enable users to explore data for potential success correlations or opportunities for investment and development.
- We added country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) usage, as a raw number.
- If there are any Internet Society chapters in a country or territory, there are now links to those chapters in the sidebar.
Improvements
Usability updates on the landing page
Removed link-filled preamble so you can get straight to the alphabetical list of countries. We removed the tabbed view, since it made the page more difficult to use. We also changed the shape of the flags from round to a more faithful rendering of flag shapes.
Improved page structure
The page should help everyone work toward the goals of an open, globally connected, secure and trustworthy Internet, but we decided the page didn’t need to be organized that way. Now it’s organized by topic, with an aim to go from basic access data to more complex and expert-level content about security.
Updated how we show routing security practices
Combined some of the indicators from the previous page into a single panel, so that it’s easier to understand and easier to parse as part of a single topic.
Removed some data types
Part of streamlining the page has meant removing some of the data types we showed before, so that we can focus on the indicators that matter most, especially around IPv4 and IPv6 and AS counts. We combined some top-level IXP data into a single panel, and removed some of the other indicators, since it’s already in the IXP Tracker. Any data types we removed are still available elsewhere on Pulse, or as part of the API.
Removed country rankings
For some indicators, we used to include regional or global rankings, but we hadn’t yet made the tiles interactive, or offered lists so that a country ranked 4th could see who is 3rd and 5th. We still include regional averages, but we will consider re-adding rankings once we’ve gotten further on our overall Pulse redesign, which will include more interactivity, more ability to drill down or make comparisons, and better interlinking between sections.
Changed some labels and names for better comprehension
A number of our previous labels and names were confusing, so we’ve updated them to be a little clearer. The focus has been on answering the question, “What does ‘good’ look like?”
- Retail ISP diversity is now Market competitiveness
- Transit provider diversity is now International connections
- Popular content locality is now Locally cached content
Other content improvements
Removed unnecessary content and explanations, and streamlined the titles, subtitles, and data labels for better readability and comprehension.
Visual improvements
More mobile-friendly and dynamic tile sizes, as well as a sidebar containing a mixture of country-level information. We also removed some of the visualization types that didn’t add value or make it easier to understand the data. We have included line graphs and bar charts, and will add more types of visualizations as we continue to develop the page.
Bug Fixes
Aligned regional average updates
Where an indicator includes a regional average, we update that average every month. But previously, we were waiting until we had all relevant measures before calculating any regional averages. This meant that for the first week of every month, for some measures, we were showing zero for that month. We now calculate each measure when we have the underlying data, which has massively reduced this issue.