Speedtest Ranks Internet Access Speed In More Than 100 Countries.

How fast is the internet in the country where you live? How does your country compare with others? Are your mobile and fixed broadband speeds equivalent in terms of global rankings? Is your country gaining or falling behind the rest of the world in providing faster internet access? How fast is fast, anyway? How slow is slow? All of these questions and more can be answered with Speedtest’s new Global Index.

The Global Index is an interactive ranking of world internet speeds that’s updated monthly. The main page rank orders over 100 countries for both mobile and fixed broadband download speeds. The average speed for each country and whether a country’s rank has increased or decreased over the past month is also shown.

To be included on the list, a country must have a minimum of 670 unique user speed tests for mobile and 3,333 tests for fixed broadband each month. There are 122 countries listed for mobile and 133 for fixed broadband.

Iraq has the slowest mobile download speed at 3.03 Mbps (Megabits per second) while Norway has the fastest at 62.59 Mbps. Singapore tops the list for fixed broadband download speed at 154.38 Mbps and Venezuela comes in last at 3.20 Mbps.

Credit: Ookla

Average internet speeds in the United States.

Clicking on a country brings up charts that show 13 months of data tracking average upload and download speeds for both mobile and fixed broadband. Hovering over the data point for a particular month shows the measured speed and world ranking for that month.

These charts are where you can really get a sense of how internet speeds in your country compare with the rest of the world. Take the United States, for example. The US ranks 9th in the world in fixed broadband speed at 70.75 Mbps average download and 27.64 Mbps average upload. Ranking in the top ten is good but the US’s average download speed is less than half top-ranked Singapore’s 154.38 Mbps. Both upload and download speeds increased steadily from July 2016 to July 2017 and the US’s rank increased from 11 to 9.

Credit: Nature Addict/Pixabay

"It wasn't this slow in Europe."

The picture for the US is not nearly as good when you look at mobile internet speed where the US ranks 46th, just ahead of Albania and behind Oman. Average download speed in the US is 23.05 Mbps which is less than half the average download speeds in Norway, the Netherlands and Hungary. Average upload speed in the US is 8.26 Mbps.  While mobile download speed increased by almost 20% from July 2016 to July 2017, the US’s world ranking fell from 44th to 46th. Not good.

How much do Americans pay for this relatively poor mobile service? The Global Index doesn’t include this information but data gleaned from the World Bank’s 2016 report on the economic benefits of employing digital technologies provides some insight. According to the World Bank, the monthly cost of owning and using a cell phone in the US is $35.62. Only the Netherlands ($41.47), Ireland ($40.33), France ($40.27), Spain ($37.80) and Switzerland ($36.02) have higher monthly mobile costs measured in US dollars.The US ranks sixth in the world in the cost for mobile internet and 46th in mobile internet speed. In other words, people in  the US aren't getting what they're paying for.

Speedtest also provides detailed rankings of of mobile and fixed broadband service providers in the US.

How fast are your internet connections? You can find out with a Speedtest.