UK Ranks 34th out of 220 Countries for Broadband Speed in 2023
Analyst firm M-Lab and comparison site Cable.co.uk have published their annual 2023 global broadband ISP speeds report, which reveals that the United Kingdom delivered an average (mean) download speed of 93.62Mbps (up from 72.06Mbps last year), ranking us 34th fastest in the world (up from 35th in 2022 and 43rd in 2021).
The research itself stems from information gathered via 1.3 billion speed tests, which were carried out across the world in 220 countries between 1st July 2022 to 30th June 2023. The average global broadband download speed was recorded as 45.60Mbps (Megabits per second), which is up from 34.79Mbps last year.
Overall, the top five fastest “countries” in the world this year were found to be Jersey (264.52Mbps), Liechtenstein (246.76Mbps), Macau (231.40Mbps), Iceland (229.35Mbps) and Gibraltar (206.27Mbps) – Jersey is of course a British crown dependency, while Gibraltar is a British Overseas Territory. Most of these are in Western Europe and are very small or island nations, where Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks are usually prevalent.
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On the flip side, the five countries in the world with the slowest network speeds were Afghanistan (1.71Mbps), the Yemen (1.79Mbps), Syria (2.30Mbps), East Timor (2.50Mbps) and Equatorial Guinea (2.70Mbps).
Some might wonder, given the rapid rollout of FTTP, why the UK isn’t ranking even higher this year. We suspect there could be several reasons for that, not least because many of the countries ahead of us have been building FTTP for a lot longer. Most other countries are also recording their own speed improvements. Put another way, until consumer take-up of FTTP lines in the UK has a chance to catch-up with the pace of build, then our ranking may only grow at a slower pace.
Caveats of the Data
As we’ve said before, speed testing-based reports like this should be taken with a pinch of salt because they can easily be misinterpreted. For example, nobody should be equating such studies to directly reflect the availability of faster connections, as the two are far from being in perfect sync.
On top of that, people are more likely to measure their speed if there is something wrong or if they aren’t getting the speed they need, which can produce a negative bias. The fact that the study completely overlooks other key metrics, such as upload speeds and latency, is another consideration.
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Just for some context on actual network availability in the UK. We reported last month (here) that “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) networks were available to 97.61% of premises, which falls to 76.22% for gigabit-capable networks and 52.77% when only looking at FTTP technology. The government wants 85% to be within reach of gigabit speeds by the end of 2025 and nationwide (c.99%) coverage by the end of 2023.
Such testing can also be impacted by other factors, such as poor home wiring, user choice of package (e.g. 1Gbps could be available, but people may pick a slower and cheaper tier), local network congestion (i.e. conducting a test while others or background tasks are using the network) and slow WiFi etc. Likewise, it’s unclear whether this study has also lumped mobile data (4G, 5G etc.) speeds or business connections in with residential fixed lines. Nevertheless, if we assume that such caveats will apply to all countries, then the data is still useful as a rough gauge of market change over time.
220 Countries Ranked by Average (Mean) Download Speed
| Rank | Country | Avg. Download Speed (Mbps) |
| 1 | Jersey | 264.52 |
| 2 | Liechtenstein | 246.76 |
| 3 | Macau | 231.40 |
| 4 | Iceland | 229.35 |
| 5 | Gibraltar | 206.27 |
| 6 | Andorra | 190.40 |
| 7 | Luxembourg | 162.21 |
| 8 | Taiwan | 153.51 |
| 9 | France | 152.45 |
| 10 | Netherlands | 142.49 |
| 11 | Slovakia | 138.03 |
| 12 | United States | 136.48 |
| 13 | Canada | 136.08 |
| 14 | Spain | 133.66 |
| 15 | San Marino | 126.88 |
| 16 | Monaco | 126.30 |
| 17 | Cayman Islands | 125.08 |
| 18 | Japan | 124.70 |
| 19 | Malta, Montana | 123.85 |
| 20 | Uruguay | 111.46 |
| 21 | Portugal | 106.53 |
| 22 | Belgium | 102.33 |
| 23 | Singapore | 101.75 |
| 24 | Norway | 101.66 |
| 25 | Romania | 100.66 |
| 26 | North Macedonia | 97.88 |
| 27 | New Zealand | 97.09 |
| 28 | Slovenia | 97.00 |
| 29 | Puerto Rico | 96.65 |
| 30 | Bermuda | 95.58 |
| 31 | Sweden | 94.30 |
| 32 | Poland | 94.10 |
| 33 | South Korea | 94.00 |
| 34 | United Kingdom | 93.63 |
| 35 | Barbados | 93.50 |
| 36 | Moldova | 92.10 |
| 37 | Lithuania | 87.09 |
| 38 | Estonia | 86.39 |
| 39 | Isle of Man | 85.89 |
| 40 | Chile | 85.49 |
| 41 | Hong Kong | 83.05 |
| 42 | Germany | 81.73 |
| 43 | Republic of Ireland | 76.16 |
| 44 | Switzerland | 75.39 |
| 45 | Grenada | 75.21 |
| 46 | Israel | 75.03 |
| 47 | Aruba | 73.42 |
| 48 | Brazil | 72.70 |
| 49 | United States Virgin Islands | 67.38 |
| 50 | Latvia | 66.79 |
| 51 | Dominica | 66.24 |
| 52 | Guernsey | 66.14 |
| 53 | Vatican City | 65.46 |
| 54 | Hungary | 63.41 |
| 55 | Finland | 62.82 |
| 56 | Thailand | 62.75 |
| 57 | Saint Pierre and Miquelon | 60.77 |
| 58 | Serbia | 60.53 |
| 59 | British Virgin Islands | 59.69 |
| 60 | The Bahamas | 58.95 |
| 61 | Italy | 58.22 |
| 62 | Russia | 57.95 |
| 63 | Saint Vincent and the Grenadines | 57.71 |
| 64 | Kosovo | 57.32 |
| 65 | Panama | 56.93 |
| 66 | Trinidad and Tobago | 56.08 |
| 67 | Austria | 55.82 |
| 68 | Greece | 53.85 |
| 69 | Australia | 51.27 |
| 70 | Qatar | 50.68 |
| 71 | Denmark | 49.98 |
| 72 | Montenegro | 49.46 |
| 73 | Turks and Caicos Islands | 48.95 |
| 74 | India | 47.99 |
| 75 | Bahrain | 47.72 |
| 76 | Saint Kitts and Nevis | 47.27 |
| 77 | Czech Republic | 46.81 |
| 78 | Guadeloupe | 45.93 |
| 79 | Réunion | 45.51 |
| 80 | Colombia | 45.13 |
| 81 | Jamaica | 45.07 |
| 82 | Bosnia and Herzegovina | 44.01 |
| 83 | Saint Lucia | 43.86 |
| 84 | United Arab Emirates | 43.62 |
| 85 | Collectivity of Saint Martin | 43.44 |
| 86 | Philippines | 43.36 |
| 87 | Argentina | 43.02 |
| 88 | Cyprus | 42.93 |
| 89 | Paraguay | 42.76 |
| 90 | Costa Rica | 42.51 |
| 91 | Malaysia | 42.20 |
| 92 | Faroe Islands | 41.97 |
| 93 | Curaçao | 41.51 |
| 94 | Saint Barthélemy | 41.22 |
| 95 | Greenland | 41.19 |
| 96 | Peru | 41.04 |
| 97 | Kuwait | 41.02 |
| 98 | Bulgaria | 40.43 |
| 99 | Rwanda | 39.89 |
| 100 | Belize | 38.86 |
| 101 | Ukraine | 38.13 |
| 102 | French Guiana | 37.98 |
| 103 | Marshall Islands | 36.89 |
| 104 | South Africa | 36.46 |
| 105 | Martinique | 35.87 |
| 106 | Mexico | 35.85 |
| 107 | New Caledonia | 35.72 |
| 108 | Burkina Faso | 35.64 |
| 109 | Belarus | 34.10 |
| 110 | Northern Mariana Islands | 34.03 |
| 111 | Armenia | 33.63 |
| 112 | Jordan | 33.63 |
| 113 | Oman | 32.61 |
| 114 | Saudi Arabia | 32.42 |
| 115 | Brunei | 32.07 |
| 116 | Guyana | 31.45 |
| 117 | Mauritius | 29.78 |
| 118 | Vietnam | 29.25 |
| 119 | Anguilla | 29.15 |
| 120 | Antigua and Barbuda | 27.03 |
| 121 | Ecuador | 26.56 |
| 122 | Bonaire | 26.27 |
| 123 | Guam | 25.75 |
| 124 | Croatia | 25.72 |
| 125 | Albania | 25.36 |
| 126 | Nicaragua | 25.28 |
| 127 | Turkey | 24.84 |
| 128 | El Salvador | 23.56 |
| 129 | Guatemala | 23.26 |
| 130 | American Samoa | 22.01 |
| 131 | Uzbekistan | 21.67 |
| 132 | Sri Lanka | 21.23 |
| 133 | Nigeria | 20.83 |
| 134 | Madagascar | 20.43 |
| 135 | Bhutan | 20.08 |
| 136 | Nepal | 19.99 |
| 137 | Dominican Republic | 19.48 |
| 138 | Seychelles | 18.75 |
| 139 | Georgia | 18.54 |
| 140 | Laos | 17.64 |
| 141 | Mayotte | 17.34 |
| 142 | Kyrgyzstan | 17.31 |
| 143 | Honduras | 16.76 |
| 144 | Morocco | 16.49 |
| 145 | Ivory Coast | 16.45 |
| 146 | Mongolia | 16.40 |
| 147 | Sint Maarten | 16.00 |
| 148 | Bolivia | 16.00 |
| 149 | Cambodia | 14.68 |
| 150 | French Polynesia | 14.55 |
| 151 | Republic of the Congo | 14.36 |
| 152 | Indonesia | 14.30 |
| 153 | Fiji | 13.96 |
| 154 | Iran | 13.93 |
| 155 | Kazakhstan | 13.13 |
| 156 | China | 12.66 |
| 157 | Uganda | 12.64 |
| 158 | Maldives | 12.49 |
| 159 | Suriname | 12.48 |
| 160 | Kenya | 12.46 |
| 161 | Ghana | 12.33 |
| 162 | Tanzania | 11.92 |
| 163 | Lesotho | 11.75 |
| 164 | Palestinian National Authority | 11.59 |
| 165 | Cape Verde | 11.49 |
| 166 | Gabon | 11.22 |
| 167 | Mozambique | 11.06 |
| 168 | Venezuela | 10.92 |
| 169 | Namibia | 10.80 |
| 170 | Haiti | 10.75 |
| 171 | Azerbaijan | 10.20 |
| 172 | Egypt | 9.75 |
| 173 | Botswana | 9.61 |
| 174 | Tunisia | 9.60 |
| 175 | Solomon Islands | 9.51 |
| 176 | Iraq | 9.37 |
| 177 | Senegal | 9.22 |
| 178 | Zimbabwe | 9.18 |
| 179 | Angola | 9.13 |
| 180 | Benin | 9.12 |
| 181 | Myanmar | 9.02 |
| 182 | Mauritania | 8.95 |
| 183 | Togo | 8.90 |
| 184 | Papua New Guinea | 8.75 |
| 185 | Guinea | 8.50 |
| 186 | Malawi | 8.26 |
| 187 | Algeria | 7.73 |
| 188 | Mali | 7.56 |
| 189 | Sierra Leone | 7.00 |
| 190 | Vanuatu | 6.57 |
| 191 | Lebanon | 6.55 |
| 192 | Zambia | 6.53 |
| 193 | São Tomé and Príncipe | 6.52 |
| 194 | Bangladesh | 6.41 |
| 195 | Libya | 6.32 |
| 196 | Chad | 5.83 |
| 197 | Eswatini | 5.76 |
| 198 | Liberia | 5.60 |
| 199 | Niger | 5.50 |
| 200 | Pakistan | 5.32 |
| 201 | Sudan | 5.24 |
| 202 | Guinea-Bissau | 5.09 |
| 203 | Somalia | 5.00 |
| 204 | Djibouti | 4.66 |
| 205 | Democratic Republic of the Congo | 4.62 |
| 206 | Turkmenistan | 4.49 |
| 207 | The Gambia | 4.35 |
| 208 | Federated States of Micronesia | 4.25 |
| 209 | Cuba | 4.14 |
| 210 | South Sudan | 3.89 |
| 211 | Burundi | 3.70 |
| 212 | Ethiopia | 3.54 |
| 213 | Cameroon | 3.16 |
| 214 | Tajikistan | 2.98 |
| 215 | Wallis and Futuna | 2.72 |
| 216 | Equatorial Guinea | 2.70 |
| 217 | East Timor | 2.50 |
| 218 | Syria | 2.30 |
| 219 | Yemen | 1.79 |
| 220 | Afghanistan | 1.71 |
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Some might wonder, given the rapid rollout of FTTP, why the UK isn’t ranking even higher this year.
Roll out is different to take up, that is the thing. Take up is still pretty slow, looked at the houses on the way to a retail park on Sunday, may as well as was walking and out of what must be 100 or so houses, I saw around 8 splice boxes. Yeah, I realise that some people may not have broadband at all, but that is very few and far between these days and some of the splice boxes may be where I can not see them, again, that would only be a couple or so of houses. That is just a couple of streets, not including the one I live in.
So maybe that is why we are low for speed.
I talk to a few people and most of them say they have no need for fibre.
Yeah if a home is on up to 40/80Mbps VDSL and that’s working well enough for them, there’s no incentive to upgrade.
Take up is going very well in the UK. Well above expectations. Hereford is, unsurprisingly, not typical.
@XGS Is On,m how do you know that take up is doing well, do you live in every city/town? Companies can juggle the figures to make them look good. I also chat to people online that live in different places and most are fine with FTTC, people I chat to here are fine with FTTC as it does the job for most people.
Take up is growing, but it is not growing as fast as providers would like, That is why openreach are forcing people to go to fibre in some places. If take up is good, then no need to be forced.
the same with supermarkets and their loyalty cards, they needed something to get people back to using them, so they have linked them with price reductions, which I don’t agree with. But that is typical of this country, manipulation, brainwashing and forcing, getting as bad as china.
Surely the biggest caveat is that if I have 1Gb available but I only buy 100Mb then I show in this list as the slower speed.
That could be right, and even some people on FTTP is below that as they go for the cheapest option
The few people i know that have gone for FTTP most have gone for 100Mb/s, a couple of gone for 500, myself included, but if I had known I could have got the 150Mb/s package at a discount I would have gone for that. I got the 500Mb/s for a discount, but I thought the lower price was only for the 500Mb/s. the other half have just reduced the speed of her broadband from 1Gb/s to 150Mb/s.
I will go down to 150Mb.s after my contract ends, not worth paying more for speed that is no advantage
Take-up in the UK is slow, hence one reason why we are so far down the ranking.
It doesn’t matter how much the ISP sales and marketing try and push it, the majority of the general public simply don’t need FTTP yet. They will need it, but not yet.
Combined with the cost of living crisis, people aren’t going to sign up for ultra fast FTTP connections that aren’t really necessary yet.
That’s not good news for all the Altnets (and their investors) who are investing heavily in laying fibre, running up huge debts that are now expensive debts because of the interest rates rising.
Take up is not slow. It’s well above expectations.
Where is this coming from that take up is slow? Openreach and others are genuinely struggling with the demand for installs.
@XGS Have you been living on a different planet? It’s well known that FTTP take-up is slow.
Hence the reason for all the redundancies across the industry.
Companies might be struggling with demand for installs, but that’s simply because their install teams are understaffed, understaffed because of redundancies!
Take up on certain providers isn’t quick enough for their debt pile / investors to be happy.
Different providers have different definitions of where they need to be, most had redundancies likely due to the UK having an escalating interest rate. On your mortgage this is pretty painful, imagine it on £millions/billions loans.
Take up % vs network will always be “low” when ramping up. If you only have a 100k footprint, but then start adding 10k/mo passed, you’re not going to convert 10k/mo into new customers. This is why you have to look pragmatically at certain areas. E.g. if you want to pick on Cityfibre, look at Milton Keynes takeup – which is over 25%. They added over 1 million premises passed in 2022. That’s a hell of a lot – the industry has moved to 18/24mo contracts as pretty normal, You have to wait for the “churn” of users who are out of contract looking for a new deal, and only then those who don’t just recontract as before, or are aware of alternatives will potentially move (and in some places with 2/3+ providers, you only have a chance of gaining that customer – and when comparing to BTOR network areas – they have more “household” names – meaning if someone is unsure about the supplier, they may go on who they know and the altnet ISP will lose out to the incumbent)
Consumers will take time to move. That’s just a few variables. There are many.
‘@XGS Have you been living on a different planet? It’s well known that FTTP take-up is slow.’
Really? See Openreach nationwide and CityFibre in Milton Keynes. Openreach are at >30%, CityFibre >25% in MK with their other areas getting there.
The local not CityFibre altnet here is at >25% in my area 10 months after going live.
Given less than 15% of customers change provider each year random altnets were probably optimistic if they were expecting people to not contract with current providers and jump to them en masse. Openreach are able to convert customers to FTTP without them changing provider, altnets aren’t but a bunch are doing fine. Redundancies might be happening with altnets that have spent way more than they planned but the ones keeping their costs under control with reasonable expectations for uptake, not expecting miracles, are fine.
Virgin Media’s bar is about where altnets should’ve looked. ~20-25% in 2-3 years. FTTP is ahead of that.
The switch to fttp was always going to be evolution rather than revolution. Our street has got to 38% take up after Openreach going live 2 years ago although the rate of take has now slowed to a crawl now. Swish are now installing in the area but progress seems very slow. The problem with the altnets is that the majority of investors seemed only to be in it to make a quick buck and not there for the long haul which the switch to fibre most certainly is. Still 34 òut of more than 200 countries is actually pretty good and ahead of some of our competitors including Germany.
correction – the uk average was 112 Mbps in 2022 – check the summary of the connected nations https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/multi-sector-research/infrastructure-research/connected-nations-2022/interactive-report
that should make the uk the 20th…
Different publications, different test data
China has one of the fastest internet in the world in both fixed broadband and mobile in 2023, but your data for China ranks at the bottom, LMAO! China now boasts the best telecom infrasturcture and dominated 5G technology and have been filing 45% of 6G patents now.
In fact, the ISPs in China don’t even accept subscriptions below 100Mbps in 2023, all the new subscriptions are above 100Mbps, which is considered minimum speed in home broadband plans in China. You need to fix your data.
I’m from China, back in 2018 there was still 20Mbps home broadband plan available in the market and I subscribed to it, a year later, they upgraded my plan automatically to 100Mbps without needing to pay extra. I was happy. It was said that they made 100Mbps minimum brandband plan in China as pushed by the Chinese government.
According to the reports of Ministry of Information Technology and Industry of China, as of December 2022, 554 million households in China (93.9%) were installed with fixed broadband of 100Mbps and above, 91.75 million households (15.6%) were installed with the ones of 1000Mbps and above. So yes, 100Mbps is now the minimum plan.
The Chinese government plans to universalize 1000Mpbs (installed by at least 80% of Chinese households) in the country by 2035.