How fast is your internet? Do you get a million gigabits a second? Probably not, but could you?
Scientists recently broke a speed record sending 1.8 petabits of information between a laser and a single optical chip system in one second. That amount, well over a million gigabits, is more than twice the amount of internet traffic the world transmits in one second, according to PC.
What the heck is a petabit? It has nothing to do with pocket bread. It’s 1,000 terabits, a million gigabits, or in layman's terms, the data equivalent of about 250,000 movies, according to Dropbox, which says one terabit holds 250 movies.
There are 307 million internet users in the U.S., about 91.8% penetration, according to Statista, and there are 282 million mobile internet users. The most popular uses of the internet in the U.S. last year were texting, email, social networks, financial services, shopping and consumer services, watching videos, video calls, and streaming music, radio, and podcasts, according to Statista.
When you get mad at your internet for being slow, you want to blame your internet provider, so you check your internet speed.
This list of countries with the fastest internet comes from the Speedtest Global Index, which compares internet speed data from around the world based on the hundreds of millions of tests taken by real people who are probably mad at their internet provider.
The index shows which countries have the fastest internet speeds, both mobile and fixed. Speedtest only includes countries that have at least 300 unique user test results for mobile or fixed broadband in the reported month.
Here are the 15 countries with the fastest median fixed broadband speeds, followed by those with the fastest median mobile speed in September 2022.
Countries With the Fastest Mobile Internet Speeds
1. Norway
Median mbps (megabits per second): 126.94
Globally, the median mobile speed was 33.17 Mbps download, and 9.03 upload.
2. United Arab Emirates
Median mbps: 126.85
3. Qatar
Median mbps: 124.29
4. China
Median mbps: 116.42
5. Netherlands
Median mbps: 105.52
6. Denmark
Median mbps: 105.40
7. South Korea
Median mbps: 104.81
8. Bulgaria
Median mbps: 103.90
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9. Saudi Arabia
Median mbps: 97.15
10. Kuwait
Median mbps: 95.04
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11. Brunei
Median mbps: 90.45
12. Australia
Median mbps: 88.82
13. Bahrain
Median mbps: 83.13
14. Luxembourg
Median mbps: 82.88
15. Switzerland
Median mbps: 81.95
Countries With the Fastest Fixed Internet Speeds
1. Chile
Median mbps: 217.43
Globally, the median fixed broadband download speed was 71.39 mbps, and upload speed was 30.64.
2. Singapore
Median mbps: 215.83
3. China
Median mbps: 196.00
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4. Thailand
Median mbps: 195.22
5. Hong Kong (SAR)
Median mbps: 186.02
6. Japan
Median mbps: 172.94
Photo: PixHound / Shutterstock
7. United States
Median mbps: 172.30
8. Denmark
Median mbps: 171.59
9. Macau (SAR)
Median mbps: 158.71
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10. Spain
Median mbps: 154.73
11. Romania
Median mbps: 147.79
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12. United Arab Emirates
Median mbps: 146.68
13. Switzerland
Median mbps: 136.05
14. France
Median mbps: 133.79
15. New Zealand
Median mbps: 131.08
You can read about the methodology for this ranking at Speedtest.net.
