Posted: 22nd Sep, 2011 By: MarkJ


The latest global study of internet download performance by
Pando Networks, a Cloud-based
Content Delivery Network (CDN), has claimed that the
average UK broadband ISP speed is now just 599KBps (
KiloBytes per second); that's about
4.69Mbps in the more familiar data currency of
Megabits per second.
By contrast the
average worldwide download speed is 580KBps, which places us just above the middle, below the USA (616KBps) and well short of the Top 20 fastest countries. As usual
South Korea and its national fibre optic FTTH network came out top with a score of 2,202KBps (17.62Mbps).
Top 5 Fastest Countries
1. South Korea (2,202KBps)
2. Romania (1,909KBps)
3. Bulgaria (1,611KBps)
4. Lithuania (1,462KBps)
5. Latvia (1,377KBps)
The relatively small
Eastern European nations appeared to dominate most of the top ten countries. Other notable locations included
Germany (647KBps),
Australia (348KBps) and
China (245KBps). But spare a thought for the
Congo, which was the absolute slowest 13KBps and followed closely by the
Central African Republic (14KBps) and
Comoros (23KBps).
The UK result is significantly lower than most other surveys, including Ofcom's latest July 2011 report that posted a figure of
6.8Mbps for the same thing (
here). It's also interesting to note that Pando published a UK specific study last month that recorded a significantly slower rate of 481KBps (KiloBytes per second) or about 3.85Mbps (
here).
Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks, explained:
"The disparities we found were striking. While, in general, developed economies outpaced the developing world in average download speeds, big names such as the US, UK, France, China and Canada were not even close to being the fastest. Instead, we saw high speeds in markets such as Eastern Europe where focus on infrastructural development and favorable geography promote a higher level of connectivity."
Pando doesn't detail its testing methodology, although they appear to be leveraging their CDN to discover the results (not unlike Akamai likes to do). Apparently the data is based on 27 million downloads by 20 million computers in 224 countries from January through June 2011. Non-Local CDN's aren't exactly the best gauge of real-world performance but then neither are anecdotal speed tests.