Singapore has been ranked number one in a test of broadband speeds across 189 countries. The data was collected across 12 months ending May 10, 2017, by Measurement Lab (M-Lab), a partnership between New America’s Open Technology Institute, Google Open Source Research, Princeton University’s PlanetLab, and others.
Broadband website Cable.co.uk undertook an analysis of the data made available by M-Lab. M-Lab aims to provide an “open, verifiable measurement platform for global network performance, as well as hosting the largest open internet performance dataset on the planet.” It is this open dataset that Cable.co.uk analyzed.
Speed was measured by how long it took to download a 7.5GB film. The throughput of a single TCP connection was measured, attempting to transfer as much data as possible for at least ten seconds.
“The data set has been queried for tests run in the year to 10 May 2017,” Cable.co.uk’s Analysis Methodology says, “in order to compile a league table of download speeds for countries tests have performed by at least 100 unique IP addresses.”
The Worldwide Country Ranking chart places Singapore at the top. It took 18 minutes and 34 seconds to download an HD movie for a mean download speed of 55.13Mbps in Singapore. In Sweden, which took the number two spot, it took 25 minutes and 30 seconds to download an HD movie for a mean download speed of 40.16Mbps.
Twenty of the top 30 speeds were recorded in Europe, with seven in Asia, two in North America and one, in New Zealand and Oceania. New Zealand recorded a mean speed of 16.6Mbps and a downloading time of one hour, two minutes and one second.
In contrast, 17 of the slower speeds were recorded in Africa, with seven in Asia, and six in South America. The top five listed countries include Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, Denmark and Netherlands; while the bottom five listed countries include Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burkina Faso, Gabon and Yemen.
