Preply Ranks UK 16 out of 30 Countries for e-Learning Infrastructure
Digital learning provider Preply has examined the state of digital infrastructure, the number of digital educational courses and the market for online learning across 30 countries in order to create a new E-Learning Index, which ranks the United Kingdom 16th, partly due to poor broadband speeds.
Overall, the UK does well in terms of access to distance learning courses (rank 2nd), access to computers (rank 8th) – with 91.7% of students having access to computers from home – and education expenditure (rank 5th). However, the UK is very average for hourly salaries offered to tutors, at £14.60 per hour, compared to £26.56 an hour in Denmark and £17.17 an hour in France.
Unfortunately, where this all falls down for the UK is in terms of our fixed broadband and mobile broadband (4G / 5G) speeds, which sees most of the other countries ranking well ahead of us in the league table. However, we should point out that the speeds given are based on web-based speedtests (Ookla) and not network availability (i.e. we’re only seeing part of the story), which means that all sorts of factors (e.g. slow WiFi) could pollute the results, but that will also be true for every other country listed.
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Equally it’s unclear from the report what sort of broadband speed you really need for e-Learning, although this would have to be weighed against the impact of anybody else using the same connection (problematic in a busy household). Otherwise the UK’s final score, across all categories, ends up being 51.9 out of 100 and ranks us 16th overall. You can see the full results here, but we’ve also pasted the broadband related results below.
| Rank | Country | Broadband speed | Mobile speed |
| 1 | Norway | 127.2 Mbit/s | 67.4 Mbit/s |
| 2 | Denmark | 141.7 Mbit/s | 49.9 Mbit/s |
| 3 | Switzerland | 155.9 Mbit/s | 57.3 Mbit/s |
| 4 | Luxembourg | 114.3 Mbit/s | 48.3 Mbit/s |
| 5 | Netherlands | 112.8 Mbit/s | 73.7 Mbit/s |
| 6 | Sweden | 141.1 Mbit/s | 51.9 Mbit/s |
| 7 | Austria | 56.5 Mbit/s | 51.1 Mbit/s |
| 8 | New Zealand | 114.8 Mbit/s | 55.0 Mbit/s |
| 9 | Finland | 91.9 Mbit/s | 46.9 Mbit/s |
| 10 | Australia | 45.9 Mbit/s | 67.6 Mbit/s |
| 11 | Canada | 123.3 Mbit/s | 71.3 Mbit/s |
| 12 | United States | 138.0 Mbit/s | 44.3 Mbit/s |
| 13 | Germany | 91.3 Mbit/s | 38.1 Mbit/s |
| 14 | France | 135.2 Mbit/s | 48.5 Mbit/s |
| 15 | Hungary | 131.2 Mbit/s | 42.8 Mbit/s |
| 16 | United Kingdom | 67.2 Mbit/s | 36.4 Mbit/s |
| 17 | Belgium | 87.3 Mbit/s | 48.1 Mbit/s |
| 18 | Estonia | 65.8 Mbit/s | 49.6 Mbit/s |
| 19 | Poland | 98.2 Mbit/s | 34.5 Mbit/s |
| 20 | Czech Republic | 60.5 Mbit/s | 47.8 Mbit/s |
| 21 | Japan | 95.0 Mbit/s | 36.7 Mbit/s |
| 22 | Italy | 60.0 Mbit/s | 38.2 Mbit/s |
| 23 | Slovak Republic | 85.3 Mbit/s | 37.5 Mbit/s |
| 24 | Spain | 132.8 Mbit/s | 34.7 Mbit/s |
| 25 | Ireland | 79.2 Mbit/s | 27.7 Mbit/s |
| 26 | Portugal | 106.2 Mbit/s | 37.0 Mbit/s |
| 27 | Chile | 103.6 Mbit/s | 18.5 Mbit/s |
| 28 | Greece | 29.1 Mbit/s | 39.4 Mbit/s |
| 29 | Turkey | 25.4 Mbit/s | 33.5 Mbit/s |
| 30 | Mexico | 38.2 Mbit/s | 30.8 Mbit/s |
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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What speed do you need for elearning?
Why do you need to know? If you use e-learning, surely it isn’t too hard to find out for yourself the requirements for the e-learning software, is it?
@GN – you are persistently trolling me. Admin – please remove the comment from GN.
@The Facts: You are constantly trolling others by posing questions that deliberately try to cast doubt on posts that dont support your ‘pro BT’ stance, or by trying to introduce confusion under the pretence of finding the facts.
@admin – it was a rhetorical question. In practice, what speed is needed for e-learning and how relevant is it?
ps – I do not have a pro BT or anyone else stance and do not introduce confusion.
@TheFacts: Sorry, but yours was in fact just a lame question, and this not for the first time either. It would have been more constructive if you had done some research on the various e-learning packages, to find out for yourself the various bandwidth requirements for the different e-learning courses if you are so desperate to know about this.
Instead, all you keep trying to do is to tear down other user’s opinions, even sometimes twisting the facts to fit in with your pro-BT views.
If you have a proper fibre broadband service then stop tearing down other users who don’t have it!
e-learning has low requirements for bandwidth. Preply don’t even mention it, they just say:
‘A Preply Enterprise student has the opportunity to access our video platform, Preply Space, and get all the benefits of an online language training directly on Preply. All they need is the latest version of Google Chrome downloaded on their computers and a pair of headphones to start improving their business terminology..’
We are near bottom in e-learning culture which can’t have helped. It would be more useful if they had identified countries with % availability of the minimum required speed.
Another flawed survey. Does not take account of population, cost of living or relative importance of each category.
22nd for broadband speed, 24th for mobile speed and 17th for costs (Turkey is ‘best’) and overall internet availability of 26th out of 30. But first for access to online education.