SpeedOfMe Ranks UK 14th Fastest in World for Broadband Speeds in H1 2026

Internet speed testing organisation SpeedOf.Me has published their H1 2026 Data report for the first half of the year, which among other things reveals that the United Kingdom ranked a respectable 14th out of 119 countries with an average (median) download speed of 82.8Mbps. Data for upload speeds and latency is also included.

As usual there are a few things to consider with this study. Firstly, it’s a web-browser based test, which tends to create some obstacles when it comes to getting accurate results for the fastest multi-gigabit broadband lines (it’s usually best to use dedicated software/apps for those). The study also included countries with at least 500 tests during the period, but countries with such a small batch of tests often produce less accurate results.

Lest we forget that speedtest-based studies like this tend to be more a reflection of consumer take-up than network availability. Put another way, the data is often impacted by other aspects of the connection (e.g. slow Wi-Fi, local network congestion, the performance of the tester’s own servers and consumer package choice), but these caveats are at least shared by all the countries involved.

Otherwise, SpeedOf.Me’s first biannual study of 2026 revealed that the global median download speed is 33.9Mbps, measured in the browser from millions of speed tests across 119 countries, while the global average upload speed came in at 19.9Mbps and the average latency was 71ms (milliseconds).

By comparison the United Kingdom ranked 14th overall and delivered well above the global median download by reporting 82.8Mbps. The UK also returned upload speeds of 31.4Mbps and an average latency time of 24ms. The “fastest ISP” for the UK was named as AllPoints Fibre Networks Limited (APFN) on 409Mbps, which was followed by LinkConnect on 299Mbps, Brsk on 296Mbps, Trooli on 293Mbps and YouFibre on 280Mbps.

The observant among you will quickly note that APFN is an alternative network, not a retail ISP (APFN sells connectivity across several networks to ISPs), while LinkConnect is not a familiar provider on these pages and Brsk is now part of YouFibre. Suffice to say that SpeedOf.Me’s system needs to work on its categorisation and doesn’t seem to be filtering out business connections from consumer ones. In addition, it would have been nice to see some results for the biggest ISPs too.

Finally, the USA was named as the fastest country in the study, with an average download of 143.5Mbps, uploads of 38.5Mbps and latency times of 30ms. In other studies, we tend to see the USA being beaten by countries like Singapore, the UAE, Hong Kong, Iceland and others. Take with the usual pinch of salt.

Fastest 119 Countries for Broadband Speed in H1 2026 (SpeedOf.Me)