The 10 Countries with the World's Fastest Internet Speeds

CommanderFrank

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Akamai Technologies has put together a list of the 10 countries with the fastest average Internet speeds. Rankings range from #10 Finland’s low of 12.1 Mbps to 22.2 Mbps high for #1 South Korea. I’m surprised that the US listed as high as it did. :eek:

Each of these countries is ranked by the average speed of their broadband internet connection in megabits per second (Mbps), and they are all faster than the United States, which ranks 17th in the world in internet connection speed on the list.
 
Number of "developed countries" in the world: 34

US rank of countries with fastest Internet: 17th

50% is a solid F. :D
 
To be entirely fair to the US, we have far more landmass to cover and the densely populated areas are a much smaller percentage of our total size. It would probably be more accurate a comparison of did a state by state or region instead of the entire country.
 
To be entirely fair to the US, we have far more landmass to cover and the densely populated areas are a much smaller percentage of our total size. It would probably be more accurate a comparison of did a state by state or region instead of the entire country.

Agreed. I see countries like Canada and Russia (aka countries with land comparable to the US) having lower spots on that list than the US. I also see many smaller countries having lower spots on the list than the US. What excuse do these much smaller, much more densely populated countries have?

#54 Italy - 5.6Mbps
#29 Germany - 8.8Mbps
#33 France - 7.1Mbps
#36 Spain - 8.2Mbps

Not doing too bad among the other countries in the Americas either...

#50 Uruguay - 5.9Mbps
#70 Mexico - 4.5Mbps
#89 Brazil - 3.0Mbps
#20 Canada - 10.7Mbps

Is 11.1Mbps average really that bad, considering that it's an average and all the empty space that is hard to cover?
 
Hong Kong isn't a country. So we're #16, unless China is ahead of us, too.
 
Hong Kong is basically an autonomous city state, attached geographically, but not politically to China.. Listing it as a country is a bit of a stretch, but so is Monaco or the Vatican. I still say I think the US is lucky to even be in the top 20.
 
To be entirely fair to the US, we have far more landmass to cover and the densely populated areas are a much smaller percentage of our total size. It would probably be more accurate a comparison of did a state by state or region instead of the entire country.
But to be fair, they're not taking the speed as a fraction of landmass.

And they did do state by state, #1 state Virgina, with 17.7Mbps average, geee who would have thought around our nations capital would be the most wired. New York pulling it at #10 was only 12.6Mbps by comparison. Too bad they don't show all 50 states data in their report, curious to where California would be, which is probably a decent approximation of the country as a whole, you have a few extremely populated areas, and the rest is open. Then of course you get the big city bufu treatment places like San Francisco who apparently won't let anyone do squat to bring in fast internet if it involves any sort of construction.
 
To be entirely fair to the US, we have far more landmass to cover and the densely populated areas are a much smaller percentage of our total size. It would probably be more accurate a comparison of did a state by state or region instead of the entire country.

Agreed. I see countries like Canada and Russia (aka countries with land comparable to the US) having lower spots on that list than the US. I also see many smaller countries having lower spots on the list than the US. What excuse do these much smaller, much more densely populated countries have?

#54 Italy - 5.6Mbps
#29 Germany - 8.8Mbps
#33 France - 7.1Mbps
#36 Spain - 8.2Mbps

Not doing too bad among the other countries in the Americas either...

#50 Uruguay - 5.9Mbps
#70 Mexico - 4.5Mbps
#89 Brazil - 3.0Mbps
#20 Canada - 10.7Mbps

Is 11.1Mbps average really that bad, considering that it's an average and all the empty space that is hard to cover?

Yes 11.1 really is that bad because the "average" is grossly inflated by the handful of neighborhooods that have Google Fiber or FiOS...while 99.9% of the US landmass has single-digit megabit DSL at best.
 
The good news is we squeaked by Canada for a change.

What about prices? We're about three times more expensive per Mbps compared to many developed parts of Europe, did that change yet? I assume in Google fiber areas at least it did, but I doubt that's gonna cover much area.
 
Yes 11.1 really is that bad because the "average" is grossly inflated by the handful of neighborhooods that have Google Fiber or FiOS...while 99.9% of the US landmass has single-digit megabit DSL at best.

But all the huge massive areas of empty land don't count to "deflate" the average in the other direction? Sounds like you are just picking and choosing "facts" that agree with your pre-formed ideas. Don't we at least get credit for coming in ahead of so many European countries?
 
But to be fair, they're not taking the speed as a fraction of landmass.

And they did do state by state, #1 state Virgina, with 17.7Mbps average, geee who would have thought around our nations capital would be the most wired. New York pulling it at #10 was only 12.6Mbps by comparison. Too bad they don't show all 50 states data in their report, curious to where California would be, which is probably a decent approximation of the country as a whole, you have a few extremely populated areas, and the rest is open. Then of course you get the big city bufu treatment places like San Francisco who apparently won't let anyone do squat to bring in fast internet if it involves any sort of construction.

Yes 11.1 really is that bad because the "average" is grossly inflated by the handful of neighborhooods that have Google Fiber or FiOS...while 99.9% of the US landmass has single-digit megabit DSL at best.

The two of you seem to have a misunderstanding of how math works..

Smaller country = fewer "rural" type areas or rather a lower % of their total developed area is Rural and a higher % is urban.

Larger countries like the US have a very significant percentage of the landmass that is Rural while the actual Urban areas are a much smaller part of that fraction. That means the urban areas even those with extremely high speeds have far less impact into the overall Averages. Now don't get me wrong, I still believe the US could be doing quite a bit better and the cable monopolies need to be abolished. However ranking wise the picture isn't quite as bad as some want to paint it because it isn't fair to compare a country in this instance the US that has a population density of 35 people per Sq km to South Korea that has a population density of 508 people per sq km. It just isn't a reasonable comparison no matter how you look at it.
 
But all the huge massive areas of empty land don't count to "deflate" the average in the other direction? Sounds like you are just picking and choosing "facts" that agree with your pre-formed ideas. Don't we at least get credit for coming in ahead of so many European countries?

ISPs in the USA are shit. They suck ass. We come in "ahead" only due to a select few neighborhoods with gigabit access while everyone else is stuck paying 2-3X as much for 3-5X slower speeds than the rest of the developed world in that survey, and then there's data caps that are basically only an American thing (I've never heard of data caps in Korea or Finland). Shoot Chris Christie paid VZW $2 Bn USD to build out broadband fiber to home in NJ, VZW took the money and told Christie that their LTE (with 5GB monthly cap) was close enough "and thanks for the $$$".

Then there's also the problem of advertised speeds versus real-world speeds. At my parent's old house in the state capitol they were paying $55/month for 6megabit down 1 megabit up, on off-peak-hours on a good day they were getting 1.5megabit down and 0.3megabit up-due to ISPs overselling their bandwidth. That kind of scenario is the norm here in the USA

Then there's AOL still having 2 million dial-up subscribers.



Our internet infrastrucutre is a friggin disgrace. The only people it really serves are the CEOs and shareholders of the ISPs, everyone else is getting badly boned.
 
The tired old pro-big business "landmass size" argument fails as soon as it's pointed out how slow Internet services are in our biggest and most populated cities, like New York City, L.A., and Chicago. Of course it becomes an even bigger joke when price is factored in.
 
Ping should be hurt by distance, not throughput which mistakenly gets called 'speed' when referrring to data rate from ISP's. Most people live in adequately dense populations, the outliers shouldn't be pulling down the average. Add to that our population is comparable to all of Europe's and we have areas that are essentially no man's land (due to government property or desert or whatever),so our densities, ignoring the least dense 5% of the population isn't that different
 
But all the huge massive areas of empty land don't count to "deflate" the average in the other direction? Sounds like you are just picking and choosing "facts" that agree with your pre-formed ideas. Don't we at least get credit for coming in ahead of so many European countries?

That would require not blindly hating US ISPs.

Google fiber barely puts a dent in the overall US average speed. Portions of Kansas city do not add up to much at the moment. These numbers are from 2014 where That was the only area covered. About 27K subscribers.
 
The tired old pro-big business "landmass size" argument fails as soon as it's pointed out how slow Internet services are in our biggest and most populated cities, like New York City, L.A., and Chicago. Of course it becomes an even bigger joke when price is factored in.

Population density is a factor. You're crazy if you think otherwise.


And please, point out what the average speeds are in NYC, LA and Chicago.

Speedtest tells me the average speed in Chicago is 30+MB. Just shy of 50MB in LA, and 56+ MB in NYC.

So, please, feel free to provide evidence of these "big joke" speeds that are in urban areas.
 
The tired old pro-big business "landmass size" argument fails as soon as it's pointed out how slow Internet services are in our biggest and most populated cities, like New York City, L.A., and Chicago. Of course it becomes an even bigger joke when price is factored in.

Facts are facts and unfortunately having a unbiased opinion requires accepting facts that are backed up by numbers not emotion. I absolutely Hate our ISP's and feel most of what they do is borderline criminal. However I understand how infrastructure works as well as understand the fundamentals of math and how averages work out. As such I can say that Comparing the US as a whole to SK as a whole as an example is an apples to oranges comparison. Which is why I said my original statement of US states individually or regions would be a more appropriate comparison. If you did a more realistic comparison, you would find that in many of our urban areas our speeds are significantly better in comparison. It is our extensive rural areas that drag the average down heavily. That isn't to say that isn't a problem, it IS. It is simply saying that you cannot compare an area that is the size of just one of our states to our entire country and expect it to be relative. It is also an admission that pushing out infrastructure to significantly more landmass is a far more costly endeavor in Time, Resources and most importantly money.
 
sounds like the first world is the last place you'd get great internet speeds no matter where you live.
 
Once again South Korea holds the title. One of the reasons for this is that ISP is a very competitive market there. There is a single grid that is run and maintained independently of access providers. The ISPs pay the grid to lease connections and bandwidth for the ISPs to offer to customers. Because of this, many ISPs are able to compete in the marketplace for who can offer highest speeds at lowest cost plus excellent customer service and no one ISP has control of the grid.
Here, there is minimal competition. Thus minimal motivation to offer high speeds at lower prices with excellent customer service. Or worse, those with a regional monopoly that have the freedom to treat there customers like crap without worrying about losing their customers since there is no other ISP to choose.
 
The two of you seem to have a misunderstanding of how math works..

However ranking wise the picture isn't quite as bad as some want to paint it because it isn't fair to compare a country in this instance the US that has a population density of 35 people per Sq km to South Korea that has a population density of 508 people per sq km. It just isn't a reasonable comparison no matter how you look at it.


But it gives them something to bash us for, which is the most important thing. That said I can't help but wonder what would have happened if this area was genuinely deregulated and I wonder why it hasn't been done.
 
That said I can't help but wonder what would have happened if this area was genuinely deregulated and I wonder why it hasn't been done.

Comcast would have bought TWC and Cox already...and would be debating merging with Verizon.

Deregulation is great! (so long as you're the CEO)
 
The high ranking countries on the list are either densely populated or have population centers in very small geographic areas. America ISP ratings are dragged down by tens of millions of people living in rural areas.

Also people in America are stupid asses that sign up for slow DSL in many areas even when faster cable packages are available.
 
The high ranking countries on the list are either densely populated or have population centers in very small geographic areas. America ISP ratings are dragged down by tens of millions of people living in rural areas.

Also people in America are stupid asses that sign up for slow DSL in many areas even when faster cable packages are available.

1. Not even one of the most densely populated places on the planet, New York, has world class internet.

2. Prices are ridiculous, not surprise people go cheap and drag the economical growth down with slow internet.
 
considering the US is the birthplace of the internet this is unacceptable we should be number 1 we should set the standard for how the internet should run. Instead we have draconian monopolys holding everything back corporations crying and whining about every little bit of copyright infringing content. All of it running on bit of copper wire twisted together and patched every time it breaks.

also my house latest test was 56.35 MB/s down 6.11 MB/s UP on wireless AC my connection is rated at 60 down 5 UP

work is rated at 100 down 15 up
 
One could lay the blame on the USA position on a number of sources ... states with insufficient infrastructure bringing down the speed ... national policy that doesn't encourage faster speeds ... consumers that opt for slower (and cheaper) services rather than going for the more expensive 4G, fiber, or cable offerings ... in a perfect world all three groups would do something to improve our average ;)
 
Not to mention many other countries that "just" got internet laid all fiber to start with...
 
What a crappy website, didn't even open with scriptblock on. So I didn't open it :D
 
The only places in the US that have fast speeds are decent sized cities for example LA and NYC.
Those who are rural are still held by the balls with dishnetwork, their 4-7 speeds and their shitty data cap of 10mb a month.
 
The only places in the US that have fast speeds are decent sized cities for example LA and NYC.
Those who are rural are still held by the balls with dishnetwork, their 4-7 speeds and their shitty data cap of 10mb a month.

Ahem not all small towns get shit on I have 2.5 choices in my town of 15k people I can get shitty dsl shitty wireless mesh that runs using my 3rd choice as a backbone. Cable
 
The only places in the US that have fast speeds are decent sized cities for example LA and NYC.
Those who are rural are still held by the balls with dishnetwork, their 4-7 speeds and their shitty data cap of 10mb a month.

Untrue, closest city to me is Rochester ny which I doubt anyone would put in the same category as the cities you posted. I'm well outside it and have cows across the field from me. Even with that I get 100 down, 15 up with a planned upgraded to 250 down next summer. Those are hardly poor speeds.
 
Beeing a Canadian that moved to Finland I can say that internet speeds here are much better as well as more acessible.

Yes I will agree that the Bigger countries have a slight disadvantage due to the larger land mass, however population also has to account for something, networks cost to develop however more people are eligible to sign up...

Finland is a country with a density od 18/km2 (roughly 1/2 of the USA) and they still managed to come out on top.

Some will say this is due to the city Density or if you will big Cities, sorry to break it to yall but Finland really has no big cities or I guess you could say 1 Helsinki with roughly 621k (5.4mil total), however factor in that only 9 cities have over 100k , 11 have 50k to 99.9k and ok so sure 50% of the population resides in 20 cities then you have another 300 Municipalities that covers the other 50%.

And well as some pointed out previously not everyone has or wants to sign up for the top tiers as well quite frankly most dont need it, and it is quite common for people to get the low tiers as well as the cost are practically nothing. Alot of the housing here offers 6-20 MB connections for just a few € a month (0-10€).

The main problem is monopolies in the US, why would a company invest millions if not billions in said area if it has no competition...
 
Sounds about right. I mean, the fact that 100mbps isn't the lowest option is very sad.
 
Finland is a country with a density od 18/km2 (roughly 1/2 of the USA) and they still managed to come out on top.

Some will say this is due to the city Density or if you will big Cities, sorry to break it to yall but Finland really has no big cities or I guess you could say 1 Helsinki with roughly 621k (5.4mil total), however factor in that only 9 cities have over 100k , 11 have 50k to 99.9k and ok so sure 50% of the population resides in 20 cities then you have another 300 Municipalities that covers the other 50%.

OR maybe it has to do with the fact that the northern half of Finland is extremely cold, a quarter of the country lies within the Arctic Circle - So north that winters last 200 days and the sun doesn't even rise at all for 51 of those days. Population density in this area falls to 2 people per square km... "Sorry to break it to you", but Population is clearly clustered in the southern portion of the country. :rolleyes:
 
To be entirely fair to the US, we have far more landmass to cover and the densely populated areas are a much smaller percentage of our total size. It would probably be more accurate a comparison of did a state by state or region instead of the entire country.

This. As much as I don't like it. It's true.
 
To be entirely fair to the US, we have far more landmass to cover and the densely populated areas are a much smaller percentage of our total size. It would probably be more accurate a comparison of did a state by state or region instead of the entire country.
The second point negates the first. The US isn't a monolithic market, and high speed coverage is terrible even in populated areas where most people live. The problem isn't a small percentage of rural users throwing off the average. Every country has rural users.

The communications infrastructure problem, particularly false scarcity used to keep data rate costs high, is often caused by lack of competition and the (awful) status quo is ensured by incumbent favoring state and local laws. China, a country about as large as the US, beats the US in the report and (ironically) has much more competition for data services.

The report does break average and peak data rates by top 10 states (Virginia with 17.7Mbps has the fastest average), in various ways. With an apples to bananas comparison of a state to a whole country, that would put VA #2 on the world average speed and #3 or #4 on the peak bandwidth ranking (~75Mbps).
 
The biggest reason that countries like US and Canada have lower avg are because we use tech that based on how far you are from the slam. Think about this way your connection from your house or apartment to the nearest telco switch has to be less than 300 meters if I remember correctly for fiber, DSL, High speed Cable which is often fiber from the house to the pole or under ground path. Which means if you live in a rural area then the fastest connection you can have is an OC48 line which is just six T-1 lines bundled together as they have less signal transmission loss over the distance. You can put repeaters in between the slam or telco switch and the switch in the house or apartment unit but for the most part you still into issues of signal attenuation or loss where cable bends or is not shielded well enough or just through energy spent getting there or lost as heat. The backbones use slightly different variations and they still have repeaters built in. The ideal setup would be to run less quality fiber to every town with over two thousand people that runs a line to the nearest city where the backbone switches costs can be spread among more people's ISP bills. The US paid to have a lot of back bone laid but only half of the money was spent on that and the rest went into salaries of exes when they broke up ma bell. But if you essentially built a backbone to every city a less backbone to every town and then let people paid to have a backbone run to their remote property you would have something more connected, and the avg speed would go through the roof since upgrading one person's connection once there is a backbone in place is really cheap the issue is getting fiber optic or cat 6 cable from the nearest college or ISP with a backbone switch, and then to the town they are in since you really don't need the backbone cable to someone's house just to a telco with the equipment to route your data to the backback and back off it again once it connects to the distant isp where it is going.
 
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