Global Internet Speed marks a shift in power
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Speedtest issued on Wednesday its most recent Global Index report exploring speeds from July 2019 till July 2021, revealing that download speeds have globally escalated in the past year regarding mobile and fixed broadband, and 200 percent faster than 2017.
A drastic change has occurred in the world’s internet performance as it witnessed a 59.5 percent spike with global mean mobile speeds reaching 55.07 Mbps and a 31.9 percent increase with 107.50 Mbps for fixed broadband.
In July 2021, the meandownload speed over mobile was 98.9 percent faster than July 2019 and 141.4 faster than July 2018. Throughout these years, internet speed witnessed a stable augmentation in speed on a monthly basis. However, in February and March 2020, the global average for mobile download speed did not demonstrate an ascending growth.
“On fixed broadband, mean download speed was 68.2 percent faster in July 2021 than in July 2019, 131.3 percent faster in July 2021 than in July 2018, and 196.1 percent faster in July 2021 than in July 2017,” the Global Index report stated.
“There was a similar dip in download speed over fixed broadband in March of 2020 as we saw on mobile. The speed increased again in April 2020 but did not recover to a pre-March level until April 2020,” it added.
When it comes to countries taking the lead in the past three years based on mobile mean download speed, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) took the lead in 2020 and 2021, surpassing South Korea after it ranked in the first place in 2019, which now took the second rate after the Emirates.
Throughout the past three years, China and Qatar’s ranking fluctuated between third and fourth, with China raking third in 2020 and Qatar ranking third in 2019 and 2021.
However, countries that were once at the helm of the classification now dropped to extremely low rankings, such as Canada and Australia.
“It’s interesting to see Australia and Canada declined in the rankings although their speeds have increased dramatically during the past three years. 5G is shifting mobile rankings where even countries with 5G (which few countries had in 2019) need a strong 5G focus to maintain their presence at the top of the list lest they be outpaced by other countries with larger investments in 5G,” the report revealed.
As for countries with the fastest fixed broadband based on mean download speed, Singapore demonstrated superiority in 2019 and 2021, which was later dominated by Monaco in 2021, pulling down the island city-state to second place.
For the duration from 2019 to 2021, South Korea plummeted from second place in 2019 to seventh place in 2021, while the U.S. presence was non-existent in the current year’s ranking.
While counties are investing their all in various new technologies, global speeds and rankings will keep shifting over time depending on in-depth analysis conducted by each countries’ research and engineering teams to rise and improve their 5G deployment.
