Once again, we’re ending this year by taking a look back to see how the United Kingdom’s position, at least in terms of the top 50 fastest countries for both fixed broadband ISP and mobile (4G, 5G) data speeds, has changed since 2021. The UK fell from 35th to 44th for mobile and from 50th to 56th for fixed lines.
The report below was created by tracking the publicly available data released by Ookla, which runs the popular Speedtest.net service for benchmarking internet connections around the world. In our experience, the company’s performance data has tended to weight more toward the optimistic side, but for the purpose of this article that isn’t such a concern because it applies equally to every country in the table.
The main differentiator for speeds between countries tends to stem from the balance between network availability and the take-up of faster connection types. For example, countries with a high availability of gigabit-capable broadband networks (FTTP, DOCSIS 3.1 – 4.0 etc.) or strong 5G mobile availability (with plenty of radio spectrum to harness) will usually rank highest in the table.
In terms of the UK, we’ve seen a strong and continuous improvement in the availability of both faster fixed and mobile networks. For example, Ofcom recently revealed (here) that 1Gbps capable fixed broadband networks had reached 70% (up from 47% last year), which falls to 42% when only looking at full fibre / FTTP lines (up from 28%). Similarly, both EE and Three UK have extended 5G to reach more than 50% of the population, with other operators expected to follow in 2023.
Overall we can see from the data below that fixed and mobile broadband speeds have continued to improve across the world but, despite big improvements in UK full fibre and 5G coverage, other countries still seem able to improve their real-world speeds at a faster pace. Part of this may be because the domestic UK take-up of full fibre and gigabit broadband lines is still in the early phase of growth (take-up often lags behind new network build and takes time to grow). We’ve summarised some of the key changes below.
Performance Categories | 2022 | 2021 |
UK Country Rank (Median) for Fixed Line | 56th | 50th |
UK Country Rank (Median) for Mobile | 44th | 35th |
Median Global Latency – Fixed Line | 10ms | 10ms |
Median Global Latency – Mobile | 28ms | 29ms |
Median Global Upload – Fixed Line | 31.16Mbps | 23.56Mbps |
Median Global Upload – Mobile | 9.05Mbps | 8.38Mbps |
Median Global Download – Fixed Line | 72.40Mbps | 56.09Mbps |
Median Global Download – Mobile | 33.43Mbps | 28.61Mbps |
Median UK Latency – Fixed Line | 14ms | 15ms |
Median UK Latency – Mobile | 36ms | 35ms |
Median UK Upload – Fixed Line | 18.55Mbps | 16.74Mbps |
Median UK Upload – Mobile | 7.33Mbps | 8.10Mbps |
Median UK Download – Fixed | 69.76Mbps | 56.70Mbps |
Median UK Download – Mobile | 45.57Mbps | 44.49Mbps |
Otherwise, the following tables show how the countries compare, using only download speed as the key measure, across the top 50 countries. Sadly, Ookla doesn’t make it easy to do the same table for uploads or latency.
Fastest 50 Countries for Fixed Broadband Speed (DL)
Country (2022) | Mbps | Country (2021) | Mbps | |
1 | Singapore | 219.57 | Singapore | 188.11 |
2 | Chile | 219.34 | Thailand | 173.44 |
3 | China | 203.5 | Hong Kong (SAR) | 170.48 |
4 | Hong Kong (SAR) | 198.24 | Chile | 163.49 |
5 | Thailand | 196.46 | Denmark | 146.64 |
6 | United States | 182.63 | United States | 131.16 |
7 | Denmark | 174.67 | Monaco | 130.73 |
8 | United Arab Emirates | 166.53 | China | 129.45 |
9 | Japan | 165.53 | Romania | 122.3 |
10 | Macau (SAR) | 159.8 | Macau (SAR) | 119.24 |
11 | Spain | 157.31 | Spain | 118.25 |
12 | Romania | 155.07 | Switzerland | 108.97 |
13 | Switzerland | 143.46 | Andorra | 102.19 |
14 | Monaco | 142.03 | Norway | 102.09 |
15 | France | 139.73 | United Arab Emirates | 101.76 |
16 | New Zealand | 134.19 | South Korea | 98.67 |
17 | Canada | 127.54 | Liechtenstein | 98.03 |
18 | Hungary | 119.36 | Moldova | 97.37 |
19 | Taiwan | 119.03 | Sweden | 96.8 |
20 | Liechtenstein | 118.07 | Hungary | 95.18 |
21 | Netherlands | 117.74 | Netherlands | 94.77 |
22 | Portugal | 116.57 | Canada | 93.89 |
23 | Andorra | 115.39 | Portugal | 93.59 |
24 | Panama | 110.96 | New Zealand | 92.05 |
25 | Kuwait | 110.07 | Luxembourg | 91.77 |
26 | Norway | 106.3 | Japan | 91.25 |
27 | Moldova | 105.22 | Panama | 91.24 |
28 | Sweden | 105.01 | France | 90.41 |
29 | South Korea | 99.87 | Taiwan | 89.49 |
30 | Uruguay | 97.48 | Kuwait | 85.92 |
31 | Brazil | 95.95 | Finland | 84.09 |
32 | Poland | 95.59 | Poland | 83.97 |
33 | Israel | 95.54 | Malta | 83.58 |
34 | Luxembourg | 93.95 | Israel | 83.57 |
35 | Finland | 93.79 | Lithuania | 80.76 |
36 | Malta | 92.27 | Saudi Arabia | 79.39 |
37 | Lithuania | 91.5 | Brazil | 78.16 |
38 | Malaysia | 90.24 | Belgium | 76.55 |
39 | Saint Lucia | 87.67 | Trinidad and Tobago | 73.07 |
40 | Qatar | 87.33 | Malaysia | 72.97 |
41 | Colombia | 87.24 | Barbados | 70.74 |
42 | Belgium | 85.31 | Germany | 64.94 |
43 | Saudi Arabia | 85.1 | Vietnam | 64.67 |
44 | Trinidad and Tobago | 82.94 | Ireland | 64.11 |
45 | Barbados | 81.92 | Russia | 61.7 |
46 | Dominica | 79.83 | San Marino | 61.52 |
47 | Vietnam | 78.87 | Slovenia | 61.23 |
48 | Slovenia | 78.81 | Qatar | 60.73 |
49 | Germany | 77.34 | Latvia | 57.85 |
50 | Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 76.86 | United Kingdom | 56.7 |
Fastest 50 Countries for Mobile Speed (DL)
Country (2022) | Mbps | Country (2021) | Mbps | |
1 | United Arab Emirates | 138.82 | United Arab Emirates | 130.19 |
2 | Norway | 129.81 | Norway | 107.5 |
3 | Qatar | 126.03 | South Korea | 98.93 |
4 | South Korea | 125.17 | Qatar | 92.83 |
5 | China | 113.5 | Netherlands | 91.66 |
6 | Netherlands | 109.45 | Saudi Arabia | 87.66 |
7 | Denmark | 109.29 | Bulgaria | 83.71 |
8 | Bulgaria | 106.88 | Cyprus | 81.41 |
9 | Kuwait | 102.73 | Switzerland | 80.45 |
10 | Saudi Arabia | 97.81 | Australia | 79.24 |
11 | Brunei | 97.37 | China | 78.61 |
12 | Australia | 87.76 | Kuwait | 77.06 |
13 | Luxembourg | 83.14 | Croatia | 76.92 |
14 | Switzerland | 82.91 | Denmark | 75.84 |
15 | Bahrain | 82.67 | Luxembourg | 72.85 |
16 | Sweden | 82.1 | Canada | 70.33 |
17 | Finland | 76.27 | Singapore | 68.32 |
18 | Canada | 74.77 | Brunei | 62.3 |
19 | Croatia | 74.35 | Finland | 58.68 |
20 | Singapore | 74.19 | Sweden | 58.26 |
21 | Macau (SAR) | 73.67 | United States | 53.2 |
22 | North Macedonia | 73.62 | Estonia | 53.12 |
23 | United States | 72.34 | France | 52.7 |
24 | Lithuania | 67.1 | Germany | 51.81 |
25 | Cyprus | 66.33 | Taiwan | 51.67 |
26 | Taiwan | 65.93 | Austria | 51.17 |
27 | New Zealand | 63.15 | Greece | 48.88 |
28 | Portugal | 62.19 | North Macedonia | 48.76 |
29 | Austria | 61.25 | Belgium | 48.54 |
30 | Hong Kong (SAR) | 61.12 | Maldives | 48.46 |
31 | Maldives | 61.09 | Lithuania | 48.24 |
32 | Greece | 60.57 | Oman | 46.54 |
33 | France | 60.54 | Slovenia | 44.56 |
34 | Belgium | 59.68 | Bahrain | 44.52 |
35 | Estonia | 58.59 | United Kingdom | 44.49 |
36 | Montenegro | 57.36 | Albania | 44.12 |
37 | Germany | 57.27 | Hong Kong (SAR) | 43.88 |
38 | Slovenia | 54.3 | New Zealand | 43.44 |
39 | Malta | 50.68 | Serbia | 42.78 |
40 | Oman | 50.03 | Macau (SAR) | 42.57 |
41 | Serbia | 47.78 | Malta | 41.76 |
42 | Suriname | 46.09 | Czechia | 41.32 |
43 | Latvia | 45.99 | Japan | 40.51 |
44 | United Kingdom | 45.57 | Poland | 39.52 |
45 | Slovakia | 43.95 | Portugal | 39.1 |
46 | Iran | 42.95 | Hungary | 36.67 |
47 | Japan | 42.93 | Iraq | 36.56 |
48 | Czechia | 42.24 | Montenegro | 36.21 |
49 | Hungary | 42.11 | Vietnam | 35.33 |
50 | Romania | 40.62 | Italy | 35.31 |
not surpised as uk not in the top 50 for fixed line fastest broadband – why is this?
surprised
Sadly, Ookla doesn’t make it easy to do the same table for uploads,otherwise the rank of U.K is even lower in the upload speed than the download speed!
I can get 5mbps on a good day. Poor show UK government and too many broken promises Scottish Government with the R100 programme.
About what you would expect from a 10th rate country that is the UK of 2022
Feel free to leave any time you like.
Given that over 70% of us have access to gigabit speeds (source Thinkbroadband), the U.K. average is primarily about the purchase decisions that we are making as consumers rather than about the broadband infrastructure. If we all purchased the fastest available service, we’d easily top the table with average download speeds of 571 Mbps (again source Thinkbroadband).
Very slow roll out on fixed fibre broadband. Open reach won’t complete their rollout until 2050.
Open reach target date is useless.
We are not using full use of 5g. Still 4g rollout not complete.
Blame Donald trump when his was president and Oliver dowden and his cronies why slow roll outs .
These stats are meaningless and don’t make much sense in isolation; For example China comes third in the “Fastest 50 Countries for Fixed Broadband Speed”, does this mean the whole of China has access to speeds up to 203.5Mbps, including Rural and suburban outskirts of major China cities? What is the affordability for Broadband in countries like Chile and China, and how does that affect take up? What is the core Network bandwidth usage for the various countries and is fast broadband only available to certain demographic segments?
Would the UK come in the top 10 if they offered say 10Gbps in one street in every city? To suggest the UK is 56th in World rankings, with China third, discredits the data in my opinion.
Agreed, the US for example has a large number of subscribers who can’t get higher speed broadband using any terrestrial connection (only starting to get via 4G/5G sometimes or satellite), and therefore the stats should be weighted to take that into account.
Also would be interesting to see cost per MBps for high speed, adjusted for purchasing power parity (the economist magazine “Big Mac” measure of PPP feels like the right PPP measure–how many Mbps would you get for the cost of a McDonalds Big Mac in each country). Some countries would fare poorly on this measure.
Dead right. 5 people in Vietnam can get 83Mbps, the other 102 million can’t get a connection and couldn’t afford it if they could. And fools come on here to slag off Britain.
You need to look up what the meaning of “median” is on Wikipedia.
Just because the UK doesn’t top the charts doesn’t mean that the UK is being slagged off. China is a richer country than the UK so is it so surprising that the median broadband speed is higher than the UK?
I was rather impressed by how much France improved in the fixed broadband speeds.
Oh dear. You don’t get it do you? I’m well aware of what median means, I don’t need Wikipedia. These tables are measuring the speeds that people can get. Those people who can’t get a connection are not counted. The median (since you’ve looked it up) income in Vietnam (to take just one country as an example) is USD 3149 pa. How many of the people in Vietnam do you suppose can afford a connection, and something to use it, on that sort of income? But they’re not counted in this report, only the handful of people who have a connection are. Think about it.
Not going to lie but China has a speedy broadband expansion. They already have good LTE coverage. And in past few years, they use FTTC and IPTV to improve television coverage in rural areas, instead relying on technology like Freeview. This also helps to increase the coverage of internet in rural area.
China has 0.587 B broadband subscribers and 1.41 B population,so the Penetration rate of broadband in China is higher than U.K.
Why has the developing in the deploying of fiber in U.K recenly? the competition from China!
Very poor show by the ISP’s
A bunch of greedy capitalist a-holes.
The government don’t help either. Giving away tax payers money to ISP’s who don’t deliver.
A disgrace and you lot let them get away with it.
I suppose you’d run some sort of communist ISP that charges nothing? And zero taxpayer money has been given to ISPs to do nothing. Why are there so many whingers on this forum?
Denmark was a first mover on DOCSIS 3.1 (full deployment). Half the country got access to 1 Gbps down/500 Mbps up between 2016 (mid) and 2018 (end).
Ah the result of Government interference, the country could have been up there with South Korea.
Not sure how accurate the sampling is. When I am happy with my speed (under FTTP) I don’t bother. Back when I had FTTC, ADSL and even ADSL I did run speedtests.
There are people out there that can’t get even FTTC, in fact I know a household who was still on dial up until recently as it was better than the ADSL connection they had, they have now gone to mobile broadband.
This is what needs to be sorted first, but sadly BT and other companies over build each other just to get money. Openreach because they are the main network provider should be forced to get decent broadband to everyone, and I don’t mean superfast broadband, just a decent speed, so it can be used.
I have the choice of FTTP via two networks now, openreach spent money of putting fibre here when we already have a fibre network instead of spending the money to help people with poor broadband.
Scared to lose out Openreach is,
Blame Oliver dowden Tory mp and his cronies the tories getting rid HUAWEI 5g infrastructure by bow downing to Donald trump ex useless waste of space president orange man .for the slow 5G rollout
The tories and Oliver dowden Tory mp and his pathetic waste of space useless government and trump why 5G sucks as every single HUAWEI equipment got to ripped out of our 5G network by 2027 because of “security risks” by china what a load of BS.so 5G rollout fully out by 2035 .
How much do Wuamo get paid?
Should never have gone down the China line (pardon the pun). Whilst I can understand big business selling their soul to the devil, the Government has to protect the country.
You can not trust the Chinese state. It is shameful/ignorant that posters on here think we should.
Question – take away their speed tester, and would the average domestic user be able to tell whether they were on 200 Mb/s or 50 Mb/s?
“Surveys” like this are completely meaningless for determining typical broadband performance. It’s a self-selecting group of users who already have broadband and are interested in its speed. That’s all it is, and it’s ridiculous to treat it an anything other than that.
Seems to confirm that Openreach and their stopgap FTTC obsession did a lot of damage just as people predicted.
Never reached enough people and significantly delayed the rollout of real FTTP, now it’s about catching up and to their credit (combined with giant piles of money from multiple governments) they are actually building out FTTP beyond towns and cities.
Still, damage done and VDSL was not the solution it was marketed as.
The UK was a world leader in superfast availability after VDSL/FTTC build was done.
I take it you were one of the less than 5% not covered by it?
@XGS
re
The UK was a world leader in superfast availability after VDSL/FTTC build was done.
Citation please
PS I am one of the 5% enjoying sub-standard broadband, and paying (subsidising) those getting superfast speeds, why OR&BDUK screwed up.
You’re as capable as I am of using Google, Dankshire, though https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/telecoms-research/broadband-research/eu-bbroadand-scorecard and this very site are good places to start. My recollection is of a report highlighted here showing the UK second in the then EU28.
I’m not getting into the subsidy thing. We have been down this road before and last time you admonished me with that food needs to be grown somewhere so, even though you aren’t involved in that, you are entitled to subsidised Internet.
Yes its rather sad, other examples spring to mind where the British Isles invented stuff, only to let it degrade,
railways for one. Google (other web searchers are available) for Dr Peter Cochrane, former Chief Technology Officer at BT to see how the UK lost the broadband race way back in the 90s.
The figures in the last two tables are all out of alignment on both mobile and desktop.
Like all stats, the table will never be the full picture.
If you look at fairly objective stats from Thinkbroadband (sorry to mention a competitor site) the actual mean download speed in the UK (taking into account all technologies) is 100mbs. The “clean” mean download speed is 62.5mbs (taking only stable results). The Estimated Maximum Mean Download Speed (if everyone took the fastest available speed) is 572mbs.
What does that indicate? All stats depend on the things being measured and average speeds depend on what users are prepared to pay for their service, not whats available.
Part of the problem is that demand hasn’t kept up with supply. I’m on VM’s lowest tier plan, not because I can’t afford 200 mbps or even gigabit, but because I don’t need it. Gigabit is insane overkill when 4K streaming only needs 15-25 mbps, it makes no difference for regular usage, and even downloading large things is plenty fast on 100-200 mbps.
Mobile broadband though is another matter as you’re not paying for a particular speed there, and it’s sad to see 5G hasn’t yet made the impact that it should. With its massive channels it should offer crazy speeds, Three’s 100MHz n78, if you can connect to it, gives usually north of 500 mbps down. So why aren’t most people yet benefiting from it.
The demand for upload speed is the key! There is no much choice of upload speed than upload speed offered by carriers of broadband, That is the key!