NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, July 15, 2019

By Yomi Kazeem

It’ll take over 22 hours to download a 5-gigabyte movie in oil-wealthy Equatorial Guinea, the worst ranked African country whereas in Taiwan, top of the broadband speed league, it will take only eight minutes.

The difference in download times mirrors the growing gap in internet speeds between the top and worst ranked countries, according to UK analytics firm Cable, which did over 276 million speed tests in over 200 countries.

While global average speeds increased 20% over the past year, much of that growth has happened in developed nations which are already home to established connectivity infrastructure. As a result, while the top 100 countries in the table made speed gains of 4.08 megabits per second (Mbps), the bottom 100 gained an average of only 0.47Mbps.

Photo courtesy of Arne Hoel.