Which nations have the fastest and most reliable internet connections?

One company’s research returns interesting results, especially regarding Australia.

A United Kingdom company decided to research and compare the different internet speeds for countries around the world. The results were intriguing from an Australian point of view.

Circleloop analysed the connection speeds, as well as the availability of mobile internet services such as 4G and 5G, in 97 countries. Each of the six factors studied gave each country a normalised score out of 10, then an average of these six scores determined the overall score out of 10.

The clear winner was South Korea, with a score of 9.55 out of 10 across the six factors researched. South Korea scored highly across the board, being the top-ranking nation when it came to average fixed broadband upload speed (227.26 megabitpixels per second) and narrowly missing out on top spot when it came to the availability of 4G, with 98.3%.

Supposed industrialised and connected countries did not fare so well: the USA, Australia, UK and Canada all missed out on a place in the top 10. The US came 15th, Canada ranked 19th, Australia was 23rd, the UK came in 28th place and New Zealand came in 21st.

A reliable and fast internet connection is vital these days, especially in a world where more are working from home than ever, with some choosing to abandon the office altogether and work while travelling the world as ‘digital nomads’. A good connection enables personnel to work effectively whether working remotely or from the office and stay with colleagues right around the world via video or conference calling.

Another Asian country with a well-developed economy came in second: Singapore. It had the fastest download speeds when it came to fixed broadband and boasted the second-highest fixed download speeds, along with good 4G coverage: 94.2%. The United Arab Emirates was the third country to fill the top three, with an overall score of 8.19 out of 10. Switzerland was the first European country coming in at 4th with a score of 7.81.

Australia’s score of 6.21 came from the mix of results from being 6th in mobile download speeds, 40th in broadband download speeds, 18th in mobile upload speed, 57th in broadband upload and 8th in 4G availability.

Data for the average download and upload speeds of both mobile and fixed broadband internet were sourced from the Speedtest Global Index, using April 2021 data. 4G availability was sourced from Opensignal’s State of Mobile Network Experience 2020 report and refers to the average proportion of time Opensignal users spend with a 4G connection on their operator’s network. Whether 5G had been launched or not was sourced from the European 5G Observatory.