Europe leads the broadband speed table

Broadband speed dial

Western Europe dominates the global internet speed table, containing eight of the top 10 fastest countries in the world for broadband.

Analysis of over a billions speed tests by comparison site Cable.co.uk shows if you want really fast speeds you need to move to the Channel Island of Jersey which tops the chart with an average speed of 274.27Mbps.

Only two states outside Europe make it into the top 10, Macau (128.56Mbps) and Hungary (104.07Mbps). At 51.48Mbps, the UK average puts it in 20th place in Europe and 43rd in the world. The US ranks 14th in the world with an average speed of 92.42Mbps.

Worst average speeds are in North Africa, which collectively has the lowest average speed in the world (5.68Mbps). Worst single country is the former Soviet state of Turkmenistan with a speed of only 0.50Mbps.

Things are improving though. Last year, the five fastest countries had download speeds around 276 times faster than the five slowest. That gap is narrowing for the first time since the study began in 2017. This year the top five are only 202 times faster than the five slowest.

Commenting on the worldwide rankings, Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, says:

The acceleration of the fastest countries in the world has finally plateaued this year as they reach FTTP pure fibre saturation. Increases in speed among the elite performers, then, can be attributed in greater part to uptake in many cases than to network upgrades.

Meanwhile, though the countries occupying the bottom end of the table still suffer from extremely poor speeds, 2021's figures do indicate that the situation is improving.

Europe absolutely dominates the leaderboard once again thanks to largely excellent infrastructure. In all cases, those countries ranking highest are those with a strong focus on pure fibre (FTTP) networks, with those countries dawdling too much on FTTC and ADSL solutions slipping further down year-on-year.

You can explore the results on an interactive map at the Cable.co.uk site.

Image credit: Sashkin / Shutterstock

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