Stateside telcos frequently get into spats over U.S. speed rankings from third party services, with each claiming to have the fastest network around. But those carriers might want to take a look around on the global stage, where they’re collectively being dominated by operators across much of the developed world.
According to Akamai’s latest “The State of the Internet” report, the United States’ average mobile internet connection speed hit 10.7 Mbps in the first quarter of 2017. While that figure was the highest in the countries surveyed in the Americas, it was only enough for a middling placement among the 62 countries surveyed globally.
The United States placed 28th among the 32 countries in the survey that hit a benchmark speed of 10 Mbps or higher, beating out only Luxembourg’s 10.4 Mbps, Canada and Turkey’s identical 10.3 Mbps postings, Kuwait’s 10.2 Mbps, and United Arab Emirates’ 10 Mbps. The U.S. average in turn was soundly surpassed by countries like Slovenia (11.3 Mbps), Slovakia (14 Mbps), Indonesia (12.8 Mbps), Kenya (13.7 Mbps), and Belgium (16.2 Mbps). The sprawling land mass that is Australia also blazed past U.S. speeds with an average of 15.7 Mbps.
The U.S. ranking was also less than half that of the United Kingdom, which topped all countries surveyed with average mobile internet speeds of 26 Mbps.
It should be noted that these speeds were maintained despite a 70 percent increase in mobile data traffic over the past year to around 9,500 PetaBytes per month (including uplink and downlink), according to Ericsson figures cited in the report. Over the past five years, cumulative data traffic growth has surpassed 1,200 percent.
Even as U.S. carriers are announcing their 5G plans, it seems they have more work to do on the 4G networks that will sustain them until those implementations.
Here’s a list of the countries that had faster average mobile internet speeds than the United States:
The United Kingdom, German, Finland, France, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Romania, Australia, Japan, Netherlands, Slovakia, Spain, Kenya, Austria, Ireland, Sweden, New Zealand, Taiwan, Indonesia, Italy, Egypt, Hungary, South Korea, Greece, Slovenia, and Estonia.
Akamai’s full report can be downloaded here.
