Despite claims from America’s wireless companies that they deliver world-class wireless speeds, a new report from Akamai shows the United States only ranked 28th fastest in the world, beaten by the African nation of Kenya that ranked 14th.
Kenya’s 13.7Mbps average mobile broadband speed is almost twice as fast as the global average and consistently better than the U.S., where 10.7Mbps is the average. Nearly 90% of Kenya relies on mobile phones to reach the internet, primarily because its fixed line network never developed adequately to support faster broadband speeds. Kenyans have cell phones with cheap data plans, supported by a growing optical fiber backhaul network.
The United Kingdom, Germany, Finland, France, Norway and Denmark all scored the highest, with UK customers now getting an average speed of 26Mbps over 4G connections.
I care very little about the anemic 3G-5G mobile networks. I’m far more interested in home services. How are we doing in that sphere? I had to shell out more money than my Comcast 90Mbps / 1Tb /$140 connection is worth, but it’s better than the 25Mbps DSL for $80/month I had before it. At least now I have a crappy tv service to go with it.