Global Broadband Statistical Porn

July 29, 2010 5:29 AM

Global Broadband Statistical Porn (SFW) (via)

The average download speed among all users tested globally in the last 30 days is 7.6Mbps, with South Korea coming in at a whopping 31.37Mbps, and Nepal at 0.37Mbps. (The US ranks 27th with an average speed of 9.91Mbps.)

posted by crunchland (22 comments total)

Saw this yesterday. It always surprises me that students are amazed that the US ranks so low (I teach in the US.) and that they should take the broadband speeds into account when designing websites or content that needs to be downloaded in some manner.

One student had a startling revelation that when he gamed internationally that he would do poorly. Now I have no experience with this, but if anyone into gaming with large servers, can chime in on how international broadband speeds impact play that would be interesting. Also, how firms balance out their various clients access/speed issues would be nice to know as well.
posted by jadepearl at 5:37 AM on July 29, 2010

14.83 Mbps d/l
9m ping.

I'm good.
posted by Splunge at 5:38 AM on July 29, 2010

It'd be interesting to see how this correlates to population density since South Korea has one of the highest population densities in the world.
posted by XMLicious at 5:44 AM on July 29, 2010

Humm. Within the US, San Jose tops the list, which I guess isn't that hard to believe. It comes in just behind Berlin and just ahead of Moscow in average bit rate. (Which is different than 'most connected' because it doesn't seem to really factor in number of users as % of population or anything.) Long Beach is the next one in the States.

But after that, your best place to live for broadband would be, at #30 worldwide, Pittsburgh. That's fairly cool. Nothing about ISPs is given though; is Pittsburgh's best-in-the-East performance just a result of sample bias, or is there an actual policy behind it? E.g. muni broadband or something like it? A quick Google doesn't turn up much of anything, and it seems like FIOS only made it there about a year ago.

I was a little surprised that Wilson, NC, which has a successful public/private muni broadband partnership (although 20Mb from $55/mo doesn't seem that impressive), didn't score higher.
posted by Kadin2048 at 5:45 AM on July 29, 2010

14 mbps down / .5 up. Time Warner really, really throttles upload speed.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:47 AM on July 29, 2010

to see how this correlates to population density

Not so much it seems.

As of today, the Global Download Index is 7.68Mbps, and based on GDP, the top countries by download speed are:

South Korea (36.5Mbps)
Latvia (23.3Mbps)
Republic of Moldova (21.5Mbps)
Japan (20.3Mbps)
Sweden (19.8Mbps)

On the list of most densely populated countries Latvia is 174, Sweden is 194.

In Sweden the answer is competition. I can choose from three cable ISPs, four or five DSL providers, and three wireless providers, one of which is already offering LTE.

Wireless broadband (7.2mbps) unlimited download costs 199SEK (about USD28) per month.
posted by three blind mice at 6:12 AM on July 29, 2010

6 mbps down, 1 mbps up - wide area wireless on Clear 4G WiMax - unlimited bandwidth.

80+ gb per month. (!!)

My ISP probably hates me. And I'm also really glad I didn't try some damn fool thing like getting an AT&T or T-Mobile 3G data connection, because their limits are something ridiculous like 2 gb a month. I pulled down 8 gb the very first day I was on Clear just streaming YouTube videos and doing bandwidth testing.

I think it's interesting that a little over 10-12 years ago I was also an early adopter for Sprint PCS back when 99 bucks a month for 1000 minutes of cell calls was a pretty good deal, and I was an early adopter for Cricket or Metro PCS. These are all basically "all you can eat" and "no contract" plans, just like my Clear account.

I'm still kinda sheepish about that 80 gb in a month figure. Hey, you said "unlimited"!
posted by loquacious at 6:19 AM on July 29, 2010

I'll just wait for the CRTC to fix things here in Canada.

I guess I should go get a coffee while I wait.
posted by chunking express at 6:28 AM on July 29, 2010

It'd be interesting to see how this correlates to population density since South Korea has one of the highest population densities in the world.

Well, New York City has a fairly high population density and their broadband is still in Shitsville compared to Seoul, Tokyo, Helsinki, Stockholm, etc.

Which is to say, please let's not drag out this old, fallacious canard about how the only reason we don't have comparable high speed internet is because we're such a Grand, Huge, Vast Country. Because it's complete bullshit.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 6:46 AM on July 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

14 mbps down / .5 up. Time Warner really, really throttles upload speed.

I work at TWC. The reasoning, as it was explained to me, for the slow upload is that it is too susceptible to noise due to modulation. The bits are all RF at some point, and the RF can be modulated to transmit more bits per second. Now this is fine if the signal is coming from the headend, the noise can be carefully monitored so we can send the forward signal (your received bits per second) in a very clean manner. The return, however (your transmit bits per second) are up to whatever shoddy wiring job exists in your house (we probably didn't do it, most houses come pre-wired, not that if we did it would be any better tbh) as well as whatever the modem itself is pumping out. This results in it being transmitted at a much lower modulation...profile (?) I believe it is called, thus less potential bandwidth. We, and any other cable internet provider I would imagine, use QAM, and I believe it will be the same when DOCSIS 3.0 is released as well.

Fiber, however, has no such limitations due to noise, so fiber connections are typically synchronous (same down as up) from what I understand. I really wish we would get on the ball with that.

Hopefully someone with a bit more knowledge of docsis is around as well. I believe the lower modulation profiles also have something to do with introduction of noise into the headend, but I'm not totally sure.

One student had a startling revelation that when he gamed internationally that he would do poorly. Now I have no experience with this, but if anyone into gaming with large servers, can chime in on how international broadband speeds impact play that would be interesting.

You are confusing bandwidth with latency (probably). Bandwidth is the maximum throughput you can get, whereas latency is the delay between sending and receiving. An effective analogy would be how wide the cable is (bandwidth) vs how long the cable is (latency). Gaming doesn't take a lot of bandwidth, but it does require, in order to look like things are occurring realtime on both computers, that there is very little delay.
posted by GooseOnTheLoose at 7:09 AM on July 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

Thanks GooseOnTheLoose, I was not familiar with the issues and was not sure how to respond to the student.
posted by jadepearl at 7:41 AM on July 29, 2010

u 10 / d 1 / p 20 ... which is exactly what I'm paying for (about $25/mo).
I'm just not keeping up with the Johneses, 'ere in Switzerland.
How much is everyone else paying?
posted by labberdasher at 7:58 AM on July 29, 2010

The US average download bandwidth is half that of Romania, a country with 1/6th of America's GDP per capita.

I am not an expert but I would guess this is because the Romanian government actually had a plan to get people good broadband and didn't leave it up to the invisible hand of the market.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 8:21 AM on July 29, 2010

The US has a 35% higher population density than Sweden (53.3/sq mi, compared to US 83/sq mi).
posted by livingdots at 8:23 AM on July 29, 2010

I think that this is misleading in a lot of ways, but most significantly in that this is only measuring the speed of existing broadband connections, and isn't for instance measuring overall broadband availability, which would probably make nations such as Russia score significantly worse.

For this measure to have any meaning, I think it should be presented alongside a "broadband connections per hundred residents" number or something.
posted by cmyr at 8:33 AM on July 29, 2010

19.42 and I'm on Time Warner.
posted by desjardins at 10:02 AM on July 29, 2010

I get about 25 down on Cox Cable, I don't remember my up speeds.

The US has a 35% higher population density than Sweden (53.3/sq mi, compared to US 83/sq mi).

Couldn't part of it be that Swedes are more concentrated in major cities, which themselves are much more dense than US cities? Just a guess. I'm sure it also has to do with their government investing in infrastructure instead of foreign wars.
posted by !Jim at 11:18 AM on July 29, 2010

the top countries by download speed are...

Latvia (23.3Mbps)

It's great most of the time, but Doom can and frequently does commandeer the entire country's bandwidth when he gets into one of his dick-waving contests with Reed Richards.
posted by straight at 11:39 AM on July 29, 2010

Graphs with no axes? Yes, please!
posted by DU at 11:53 AM on July 29, 2010

Just got fios so we're theoretically at 25/25.

Over the wireless I get consistently about 13-16Mbits down, and interestingly anywhere from 1 to 15 Mbits up depending on the server I use.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:00 PM on July 29, 2010

21.46MB/s down, 5.5MB/s up, 16ms. Which is about what I'm paying for, but for US $60/mo. something something Comcastic.
posted by xedrik at 12:41 PM on July 29, 2010

9.38 up
.95 down
28 ms ping
$60 CDN

Shaw Cable is choking my internets!
posted by deborah at 1:52 AM on July 30, 2010