UK Jumps to 4th out of 164 Countries for 2022 Internet Accessibility
The 2022 Internet Accessibility Index has just been published by comparison site Broadband Choices, which ranks 164 countries and territories on the quality of their broadband and mobile infrastructure to find the world’s most connected countries. Overall, the United Kingdom managed to jump from 6th to 4th place this year.
The accessibility index attempts to score based on ten different ranking factors, such as fixed line broadband speeds, the price and affordability of internet packages (excluding business broadband and bundle deals), the cost of mobile data (per 1GB) on SIM Only plans, the percentage of the population with access to the internet, mobile data (4G / 5G) coverage, the number of public WiFi hotspots and the percentage of webpages by national language etc.
Denmark continued to hold the top spot this year, thanks to its strong broadband speeds and affordability scores, among other things. By comparison the UK ranked an impressive 4th place (up from 6th last year) thanks, at least in part, to a good level of affordability. But despite this, the UK’s average download speed was still frustratingly low at 23Mbps (up from 20.06Mbps last year) – well below the results from Ofcom (here) and Ookla (here).
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The full results don’t show how each country scored for every single category, so it’s hard to know where the UK’s other positive results came from, but we probably do well for public WiFi availability, general internet availability and the percentage of webpages by national language may be disproportionately high for English as a global standard.
We should add that any speed testing based reports should always be taken with a pinch of salt because they can easily be misinterpreted or overlook key factors. In particular, nobody should be equating such studies to directly reflect the availability of faster connections as the two are far from being aligned (i.e. not everybody takes a faster connection, even when it’s available).
Lest we forget the impact of other factors, such as poor home wiring, as well as the customer’s own choice of package, local network congestion (e.g. conducting a test while other users or background tasks are active) and slow WiFi etc.
| Rank | Country | Download (Mbps) | Monthly Cost ($) | Affordability% | Cost 1GB Data ($) | Score |
| 1 | Denmark | 69.4 | 47.8 | 0.9 | 0.9 | 96.6 |
| 2 | United States | 27.4 | 62.4 | 1.5 | 6.5 | 96.1 |
| 3 | Liechtenstein | 75.7 | 76.1 | 0.8 | 4.6 | 95.8 |
| 4 | United Kingdom | 23 | 38.5 | 1.2 | 2.1 | 95 |
| 5 | Australia | 24.6 | 58 | 1.5 | 0.9 | 93.5 |
| 6 | Ireland | 17.6 | 54.3 | 1.5 | 2.1 | 92.4 |
| 7 | New Zealand | 30 | 61 | 2 | 7.1 | 92.3 |
| 8 | Sweden | 45.2 | 43.3 | 1.2 | 2 | 91.5 |
| 9 | Canada | 20.4 | 67.1 | 2.2 | 8.4 | 91.2 |
| 10 | Iceland | 45.2 | 71.4 | 1.4 | 2.1 | 90.7 |
| 11 | Finland | 37.2 | 39.5 | 1 | 1.3 | 89.8 |
| 12 | The Bahamas | 18.6 | 75.2 | 3.5 | 6.1 | 89 |
| 13 | Switzerland | 50.1 | 69.9 | 1.1 | 8.8 | 88.7 |
| 14 | Japan | 33.9 | 46.1 | 1.6 | 4.3 | 88.4 |
| 15 | Spain | 24.1 | 43.9 | 2.3 | 2.2 | 88.3 |
| 16 | Poland | 25.5 | 15.9 | 1.2 | 0.8 | 87.6 |
| 17 | Estonia | 26.1 | 30.1 | 2.2 | 1.7 | 87.5 |
| 18 | The Netherlands | 30.5 | 50.3 | 1.4 | 3.7 | 87.5 |
| 19 | Norway | 33.5 | 73.2 | 1.1 | 6.1 | 86.7 |
| 20 | Austria | 24.2 | 43.1 | 1.1 | 1.4 | 86.7 |
| 21 | Luxembourg | 22 | 59.1 | 1 | 3.4 | 86.6 |
| 22 | France | 21.2 | 32.5 | 1.2 | 1.1 | 86.5 |
| 23 | Slovenia | 24 | 37.5 | 1.8 | 2 | 86.4 |
| 24 | Andorra | 35.7 | 52.2 | 1.8 | 8.5 | 86 |
| 25 | Belgium | 26.7 | 54.5 | 1.4 | 5.7 | 85.9 |
| 26 | Turkey | 5 | 11.6 | 1.5 | 1.1 | 85.9 |
| 27 | Germany | 25.2 | 39.3 | 1.2 | 4.1 | 85.8 |
| 28 | Lithuania | 22.3 | 13.6 | 1.3 | 2 | 85.8 |
| 29 | Russian Federation | 11.8 | 7.4 | 1.2 | 0.5 | 85.8 |
| 30 | Brazil | 12.4 | 24.5 | 4.9 | 1.8 | 85.7 |
| 31 | Dominica | 6.4 | 54 | 13.7 | 4.5 | 85.4 |
| 32 | Bermuda | 51.1 | 135.7 | 2.8 | 23.4 | 85.3 |
| 33 | Thailand | 16.1 | 22.3 | 3.6 | 1.7 | 85.1 |
| 34 | South Africa | 9.7 | 58.3 | 5.7 | 4.2 | 85.1 |
| 35 | Virgin Islands (U.S.) | 14.1 | 90.2 | 4.4 | 4.4 | 85.1 |
| 36 | Romania | 16 | 9.8 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 85.1 |
| 37 | Belarus | 7.2 | 11.1 | 2.1 | 0.8 | 85 |
| 38 | Jamaica | 4.1 | 44.7 | 6.6 | 3.6 | 84.9 |
| 39 | Israel | 10.1 | 27 | 0.9 | 0.3 | 84.9 |
| 40 | Slovakia | 18.7 | 19.6 | 1.9 | 4 | 84.8 |
| 41 | Egypt | 2.5 | 17.8 | 8 | 1.1 | 84.8 |
| 42 | Hong Kong | 14.4 | 36.6 | 1.1 | 2.7 | 84.7 |
| 43 | Malta | 20.5 | 38.6 | 2.8 | 4 | 84.7 |
| 44 | Hungary | 17.7 | 16.6 | 1.6 | 3.4 | 84.7 |
| 45 | Kuwait | 7.9 | 58.4 | 1.9 | 1.7 | 84.7 |
| 46 | Latvia | 18.4 | 17.4 | 1.8 | 4.3 | 84.6 |
| 47 | Croatia | 20.6 | 29.7 | 2.5 | 2.7 | 84.5 |
| 48 | South Korea | 15.4 | 28.3 | 1.1 | 8.2 | 84.5 |
| 49 | Indonesia | 4.5 | 31.3 | 9.9 | 0.8 | 84.5 |
| 50 | Serbia | 14.9 | 19.7 | 3.2 | 1.9 | 84.5 |
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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There’s no way this will get reported on or recognised anywhere else in the media.
It’s important that the word ‘country’ is identified, as the UK is not a country.
What is it then?
UK is not a country, here is the definition of UK by Google.
The ‘United Kingdom’ refers to a political union between, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Although the UK is a fully independent sovereign state, the 4 nations that make it up are also countries in their own right and have a certain extent of autonomy.
This is fantastic, and furthermore I can add that now I am one of the lucky one who has been connected via fiber and my provider has actually a offering of 950Mbit symmetric internet connection. Its amazing to go from 60Mbit to this as there is no longer any congestion.
I prefer the pointless definition.
by country we mean a sovereign state that’s a member of the UN in it’s own right
Suprised not to see the usual upload speed complaints and the “when I lived in Romania I got a symmetrical 1Tb for 2p comments”
The UK is a country, stop spouting political rubbish.
Availability is what matters imo, and by 2025 most people should have access to at least a few hundred mbps via fttp/mobile.
I have 4G at home and it reports at least 300Mbits but its significantly slower in reality than my FTTC connection. Contention and distance to the mast is the problem.
So it’s affordability which gives it that score. Many other countries have faster download speed.not really revolutionary.