If you live in the United States and think you have access to a fast broadband connection, think again. That’s because 30 countries have faster Internet connections on average than the US according to the latest statistics from Speedtest.net.
The site, which ranks and compares connection speeds from across the globe, is a popular way for consumers to test their connection speed to the web. The service is powered by Ookla, a company that makes applications to test broadband speeds as well as networking diagnostic software for the web.
The latest statistics show that many countries that aren’t known for being technological powerhouses outpaced American connections, including Liechtenstein, Moldova and Uruguay.
Hong Kong topped all others with an average connection speed of 71.03 Mbps followed by Singapore at 52.85 Mbps. Romania, South Korea and Sweden rounded out the top five at 50.82 Mbps, 47.36 Mbps and 42.64 Mbps, respectively. In 31st place was the US with an average connection speed of just 20.77 Mbps.
Why is it then that the country that developed the Internet lags so far behind in overall speed? There are several reasons really, one of them being size. The country is rather big in terms of area of population which makes building efficient broadband networks challenging. What’s more, as CNN pointed out earlier this year, a lack of competition among service providers is also partially to blame.
Fiber connections, which offer a much faster link to the Internet than standard broadband cable lines, are slowly rolling out in the US but it’ll be quite some time before most neighborhoods are connected.
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