The REAL connection speeds for Internet users across the world (charts)
How quick are Internet connections across the world? How quick are they in your public?
This article examines the real-world connection speeds for public in the top 50 countries on the Internet, i.e. the countries with the most Internet users.
This list of countries ranges from China at number 1 with 420 million Internet users, and Denmark at number 50 with 4.75 million Internet users. We’ve included this ranking within parenthesis next to each public in the charts not more than for those who want to know.
These 50 countries together have more than 1.8 billion Internet users.
Why connection speeds matter
Why would you be interested in knowing how Internet connection speeds are distributed among various countries? Here’s why:
- As an Internet user, you can get an thought of how your own Internet connection speed holds up hostile to others in your public.
- As a Web service provider or website title-holder, you get an thought of what kind of Internet connection speeds your customers are likely to have in different countries. This is highly relevant if you want them to have a positive user experience. This naturally applies to web developers in general as well, who should be well aware of the capacity of public’s Internet connections.
Thanks to data directly from the world’s largest CDN provider, Akamai, we were able to make this report for you. Real connection speeds for Internet users from all over the world. The data is from the second quarter of 2010, so it’s up to date.
(Just in case you don’t know in this area them, Akamai is the huge dog among content delivery arrangement (CDN) providers. The company has servers all over the world and reportedly can handle as much as 15-20% of all Web traffic on any given day. This puts Akamai in a unique spot since they can measure actual download speeds all over the world on a regular basis.)
Average connection speeds
Before we go on to see how each public’s connection speeds are distributed, let’s look at the average connection speed for each public.
As we mentioned before, the number you see within parenthesis next to each public 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 nearly 17 Mbit/s it thoroughly outclasses the competition.
- China, although the largest public on the Internet, still lags behind when it comes to Internet connection speeds. Its average of 0.86 Mbit/s is far not more than the world average of 1.8 Mbit/s (see not more than).
- 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 public. With Hong Kong’s average connection speed of 8.6 Mbit/s, it’s second only to South Korea.
- It’s also fascinating 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 really pretty excellent, but as you’ve seen, there are plenty of extremes in either direction.
And here’s how the various connection speeds are distributed. Once again, this is not among these 50 countries, this is for the world seen as a whole (from Akamai’s perspective).
It’s quite cheering that as many as 22% of the connections are 5 Mbit/s or quicker, and even more that more than half of all connections are 2 Mbit/s or quicker.
Connection speed distribution
Now on to the prettiest of these charts… What you see here not more than is how the connection speeds of each public are distributed, just as in the worldwide chart. It’s fantastic for giving you a excellent overview of the situation in each public, since an overall average can only tell you so much.
The public list is sorted by average connection speed.
As this chart shows, the slowest connection types (less than 256 kbit/s) have nearly been eradicated in many countries. Though, in many developing nations these still make up a significant part of the connections.
Real connection speeds are what matters
The speeds in this article are actual connection speeds. We’re not showing what public are paying for, we’re showing what kind of real-world speeds they are really getting. After all, we all know that ISPs don’t always deliver the kind of connection speeds that they promise in their ads.
As we mentioned earlier, Akamai was kind enough to grant us with the connection speed data for this article, which made all the difference. (A huge thank you to David Belson at Akamai for his help.)
So now that you have this report in front of you, why not take a close look at how quick the Internet is in your public? And how does your own connection measure up?
Data sources: Akamai for connection speeds, Internet World Stats for Internet user numbers.
We’ll be doing at least one more post based on the data we got from Akamai, so keep your eyes open.
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The REAL connection speeds for Internet users across the world (charts)
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