Cloud: Who's Winning the Battle for Internet Speed?

A fast Internet is a key to global competitiveness, and there's a wide range today in average speed by nation. Most people are aware that South Korea is either the world leader or close to it, that other prosperous and densely populated nations form the top tier, and that the United States and Canada lag a bit. They may not be aware that Lithuania, Romania, and Cambodia are among the world leaders when speeds are measured relative to a country's wealth. Start Here Statistics put together by Ookla (a fascinating Seattle company with a fascinating CEO whom I'll profile some day real soon now) show how the world is doing with its raw Internet speeds. One of its tables shows a rolling 30-day average, and I'll quote a bit from those numbers. Ookla advises that it looks at everything - DSL, cable, wi-fi, T1-3, and satellite connections - so its overall number may seem a bit high to people stumbling along with poor residential service, or a bit low to people blazing away in a modern urban office somewhere. Lithuania actually tops this list currently, with an average speed of 33.29Mbps. Wow. South Korea is in second place at 28.63Mbps, followed closely by Sweden, Latvia, Romania, the Netherlands, and Macau. The United States takes the 32nd-place trophy in this contest, at 11.68Mbps, followed closely by Canada. Now Let's Have Fun With Numbers The Philippines, from where I do a lot of work these days, comes in 137th place, at 1.70Mbps. The fastest country among ASEAN (Southeast Asian) nations is Thailand, in 61st place at 5.70Mbps, just below Turkey and just ahead of Greece. Within ASEAN, Cambodia is faster than the Philippines, which is faster than Indonesia. More on Cambodia in a second. I'll be integrating these numbers into a report I'm producing in November, that measures how developed many nations are on a "pound-for-pound" basis, taking into account local incomes, government stability and support, and many other factors. Internet infrastructure is important, and excuses don't fix anything. Ookla's numbers, for example, show that leaders in Romania, still one of Europe's poorest nations, are working hard to lay down a fast Information Superhighway as a way to help the nation develop. The same appears to be true for Cambodia on a smaller scale - in contrast to Indonesia, which attracts much attention in this region due to its large population and consequent status as one of the world's 20 largest economies. I find it interesting to see a spread of about 60X between the world's fastest and slowest Internet speeds, compared to a spread of at least 160X in the world's per-person income levels (based on World Bank statistics). In other words, the nation's less developed countries appear to be working harder overall than developed nations to get their Internet speeds up to speed. One measure I think I'll develop will be "Mbps over per-capita income" to see which countries are doing the mostest with the leastest. I'll come up with some cool name. By this measure, Cambodia gets 252Kbps out of every $100 of per-person income, 10x that of the United States! Even super-aggressive South Korea only gets 138Kbps out of every $100 of per-person income, more than 5X that of the US but barely more than half of Cambodia. Romania and Lithuania top even Cambodia, getting 326Kbps and 304Kbps out of every $100 of per-person income. Yeah, that's the ticket. I'll develop this measure and report back. It will show which countries are truly busting their butts to bring fast Internet access to their people, and which ones are just faxing it in.