South Africa is the only African country in the top 100 countries with the fastest and slowest internet speeds in the world.
According to data by data from the Cable.co.uk, published visualcapitalist.com, the country has an average download speed (mbps) 19.94
How quickly did this page load for you?
The answer depends on the device you’re using, and where in the world you’re located. Average internet speeds vary wildly from country to country.
Which countries have the fastest internet connection? Using data from the Cable.co.uk, this map ranks the fastest (and slowest) internet speeds worldwide by comparing the fixed broadband speeds of over 200 countries.
What Factors Affect Internet Speed?
Before diving in, it’s important to understand the key factors that impact a country’s internet speed. Generally speaking, internet speed depends on:
Infrastructure or the type of cabling (copper or fiber-optic) that a country’s utilizing to support their internet service. Typically, the newer the infrastructure, the faster the connection.
Proximity/connection to submarine cables is important, as these massive undersea fiber-optic cables transmit about 97% of the world’s communication data.
The size of a country, since landmass affects how much it costs to upgrade infrastructure. The smaller the country, the cheaper it is to upgrade cabling.
Investment makes a difference, or how much a country’s government prioritizes internet accessibility.
Of course, other factors may influence a country’s internet speed too, such as government regulation and intentional bandwidth throttling, which is the case in countries like Turkmenistan.
Ranked: Fixed Broadband Speeds
To measure fixed broadband speeds across the globe, Cable.co.uk used more than 1.1 billion speed tests, sourced from over 200 countries.
The region with the fastest connection is Jersey, which is one of the islands that make up the British Isles. It has an average download speed of 274.27 mbps—almost 9x the overall average.
Infrastructure is a major reason behind Jersey’s speedy internet. It’s the first jurisdiction in the world to upgrade its entire system to pure fibre (FTTP). But the region’s size also plays a factor, since its landmass and population size are both relatively small compared to the rest of the world.
Second on the list is another small region, Liechtenstein, with an average download speed of 211.26 mbps. Liechtenstein is one of the richest countries in the world per capita, and its government has invested heavily in its telecommunications infrastructure, aiming to be fully fibre optic by 2022.
Like Jersey, Liechtenstein also has a relatively small population. At the time of this article’s publication, the region is home to approximately 38,000 people. In fact, it’s worth noting that of the top ten regions, only two have populations over one million—the Netherlands, and Hungary.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Turkmenistan has the slowest fixed broadband, with a speed of 0.5 mbps. As mentioned above, this is largely because of government regulation and intervention.
The Future is 5G
Innovation and new technologies are changing the digital landscape, and things like 5G networks are becoming more mainstream across the globe.
Because of the rapidly changing nature of this industry, the data behind this ranking is updated monthly to provide the latest look at internet speeds across the globe.
This means the bar is gradually raising when it comes to internet speed, as faster, stronger internet connections become the norm. And countries that aren’t equipped to handle these souped-up networks will lag behind even further.
