Radio Canela Guayas

Held against the 75 stations in Ecuador on this site, this one is in the leading three. The order is the directory's count of stream opens rather than anybody's judgement, which is worth saying because a leading position on a list like this reflects habit as much as anything else.

Radio Canela Guayas has 30 recorded opens in the public directory, which is a real number by the standards of this data set. Most entries never reach double figures, so a count at this level means the stream has been found and played repeatedly by people using directory clients rather than the broadcaster's own site.

Language and country do not match up the obvious way here. Radio Canela Guayas transmits from Ecuador, where Spanish leads the listing, and broadcasts in English, which seven of the country's stations use.

Where else English is on air, according to the same snapshot: mostly United States, United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom. The shelf lists all 5,984 of them together, which is the view a country hub cannot give.

The gap here is large: 64 kbps where Ecuador's stations typically run 128. Rates at this level were designed for dial-up and for mobile data that was billed by the megabyte, and plenty of stations simply never changed the setting.