The latest global study of internet download performance by Pando Networks, a Cloud-based Content Delivery Network (CDN), has claimed that the average UK broadband ISP speed is now just 599KBps (KiloBytes per second); that's about 4.69Mbps in the more familiar data currency of Megabits per second.

By contrast the average worldwide download speed is 580KBps, which places us just above the middle, below the USA (616KBps) and well short of the Top 20 fastest countries. As usual South Korea and its national fibre optic FTTH network came out top with a score of 2,202KBps (17.62Mbps).

Top 5 Fastest Countries
1. South Korea (2,202KBps)
2. Romania (1,909KBps)
3. Bulgaria (1,611KBps)
4. Lithuania (1,462KBps)
5. Latvia (1,377KBps)

The relatively small Eastern European nations appeared to dominate most of the top ten countries. Other notable locations included Germany (647KBps), Australia (348KBps) and China (245KBps). But spare a thought for the Congo, which was the absolute slowest 13KBps and followed closely by the Central African Republic (14KBps) and Comoros (23KBps).


The UK result is significantly lower than most other surveys, including Ofcom's latest July 2011 report that posted a figure of 6.8Mbps for the same thing (here). It's also interesting to note that Pando published a UK specific study last month that recorded a significantly slower rate of 481KBps (KiloBytes per second) or about 3.85Mbps (here).


Pando doesn't detail its testing methodology, although they appear to be leveraging their CDN to discover the results (not unlike Akamai likes to do). Apparently the data is based on 27 million downloads by 20 million computers in 224 countries from January through June 2011. Non-Local CDN's aren't exactly the best gauge of real-world performance but then neither are anecdotal speed tests.