The UK has fastest mobile connectivity in the world! Who knew?

14-06-2017 | Global Updates

We couldn't quite believe it either, but according to new research from Akamai the UK has the best networks worldwide for mobile connectivity.

The ‘First Quarter, 2017 State of the Internet Report’ had a look at various difference performance metrics including connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, notable Internet disruptions, and there were a couple of curve balls thrown in there.

As mentioned above, the UK had the fastest mobile connectivity, recording an average speed of 26 Mbps across the first quarter, however Europe also occupied nine of the top ten spots worldwide. To be completely honest, we couldn’t quite believe in the Telecoms.com offices so we ran a test of our own.

Using Speedtest on the Editor’s Samsung Galaxy S7 on the EE network, we got results ranging from 14.6 Mbps to 36.7 Mbps, with an average speed of 26.7 Mbps. We were pleasantly surprised. We’ve built an infographic below if you would like to have a look at the other top performers.

On the broadband side of things, perhaps it should be unsurprising that smaller countries, where the government plays a more active role in network investment, are the better performers. South Korea, Qatar and Hong Kong all performed well, but a shout out should also go to the Scandinavian countries which also featured prominently in the top ten. Singapore, another which boasts prominent government support, recorded the highest peak broadband speeds at 184.5 Mbps.

“Increases in connection speeds and broadband penetration have helped enable the Internet to support levels of traffic that even just a few years ago would have been unimaginable,” said David Belson, Editor of the State of the Internet Report.

“One need only look to January’s U.S. Presidential Inauguration, which broke traffic records for live coverage of a single news event delivered by Akamai, largely thanks to the combination of more viewers watching at increasingly higher levels of video quality.”

So if you want quality broadband, either go to a small country, where the government is very prominent, or get used to smelly fish. Or if you want to watch Netflix on the go (can’t believe we’re saying this), come to the UK.