Internet Speed By Country

Median download speed — the point at which half of all tested connections are faster and half are slower — is the standard benchmark used by Ookla's Speedtest Global Index to rank national broadband performance. Unlike averages, the median resists distortion from ultra-fast outliers in wealthy neighborhoods. The 2024 fixed broadband data covers 181 countries, while the mobile dataset captures 140 nations using 4G and 5G connections.

The United Arab Emirates leads the world at 413.2 Mbps median download speed — a product of Etisalat's state-backed fiber-to-the-home program across a 90% urbanized population. Singapore (348.2 Mbps) is the most impressive structural achievement on this list: it delivers top-3 speeds to 5.9 million residents, compared to the sub-100,000 populations of microstates like Monaco (271.4 Mbps) and Liechtenstein (211.1 Mbps) that also dominate the top ranks.

At the bottom, Cuba (4.5 Mbps), Afghanistan (4.9 Mbps), and Turkmenistan (5.5 Mbps) reflect a combination of sanctions, conflict-damaged infrastructure, and state-controlled monopoly ISPs that suppress both investment and competition.

The relationship between fixed broadband and mobile speed is weaker than most readers expect. The scatter plot below reveals three distinct clusters rather than a single linear trend.

X-axis: Median Fixed Download Speed (Mbps); Y-axis: Median Mobile Download Speed (Mbps). The three clusters — wealthy city-states (top-right), large developed nations with a fixed-mobile gap (right-center), and mobile-first developing nations (left-center) — show that fixed and mobile infrastructure develop on independent timelines.

The United States exemplifies the gap: 252.6 Mbps fixed but only 128.7 Mbps mobile, a 2:1 ratio driven by the geographic challenge of covering 3.8 million square miles with 5G towers. Denmark, by contrast, nearly closes the gap at 248.0 fixed and 157.3 mobile — a function of deploying 5G standalone networks across a country the size of Massachusetts.

Between 2023 and 2025, most countries saw meaningful broadband gains. Chile posted the fastest acceleration in Latin America, crossing the 245 Mbps threshold.

Tracking median fixed download speed from 2023 to 2025, sorted by largest absolute change. The fastest-accelerating nations tend to be mid-tier countries investing in fiber rollouts rather than already-dominant leaders.

(Note: Because this visualization displays a maximum of 51 items, some nations/entities with stagnant growth may be omitted to highlight the largest statistical changes).