SPEED MATTERS: How to Fast on fast Broadband while in Korea

The REAL connection speeds for Internet users across the world (charts)

 November 12th, 2010 by Pingdom

How fast are Internet connections across the world? How fast are they in your country?

This article examines the real-world connection speeds for people in the top 50 countries on the Internet, i.e. the countries with the most Internet users.

Why connection speeds matter

Why would you be interested in knowing how Internet connection speeds are distributed among various countries? 

• As an Internet user, you can get an idea of how your own Internet connection speed holds up against others in your country.

 The Huffington Post   won't give away which country boasts the fastest connection speed (You'll have to view the slideshow to find out), but let's just say that it blazes past the United States at nearly 17 Mbits/second.

Check out our slideshow (below) of the top 19 countries listed by Akamai. Are any of these findings a surprise? Share your thoughts in the comments, then see our post on the top 5 riskiest country web domains.

#12 - United States

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Average connection speed: 4.60 Mbits/second
Global rank in terms of Internet users: #2

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• Average connection speeds

Before we go on to see how each country’s connection speeds are distributed, let’s look at the average connection speed for each country.

As we mentioned before, the number you see within parenthesis next to each country is its worldwide rank in terms of Internet users, i.e. its size on the Internet. The chart is sorted by the average connection speed.

Some observations:

• South Korea, as is well known, is something of an Internet speed king, and that’s made abundantly clear in this chart. At an average connection speed of almost 17 Mbit/s it thoroughly outclasses the competition.
• China, although the largest country on the Internet, still lags behind when it comes to Internet connection speeds. Its average of 0.86 Mbit/s is far below the world average of 1.8 Mbit/s (see below).
• And speaking of China, Hong Kong, technically a part of China but separated in most surveys for statistical purposes, is clearly far ahead of its mother country. With Hong Kong’s average connection speed of 8.6 Mbit/s, it’s second only to South Korea.
• It’s also interesting that all three top positions are in Asia.
• Of the top 10 in this “speed list,” three are from Asia, and seven from Europe.
• Canada beats the United States, barely, with 4.7 Mbit/s versus 4.6 Mbit/s.

Worldwide averages

The average connection speed for Internet users worldwide, not just among these 50 countries, but all countries, is an average of 1.8 Mbit/s. As an average, this is actually pretty good, but as you’ve seen, there are plenty of extremes in either direction.