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.

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.

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