Quality of Internet in Different Countries

As internet quality improves, concerns about the size of mobile games or apps are becoming less of an issue. However, it’s still wise to consider app size during development, particularly when targeting markets with relatively slow mobile and fixed broadband speeds.

Fixed broadband and mobile internet speeds vary significantly across countries. In my opinion, it’s useful to analyze this data in conjunction with a country’s urbanization level. It seems that the lower a country’s urbanization, the higher the likelihood that actual internet speeds will deviate from the average (especially in large countries). Here I looked at the data provided by The Speedtest Global Index by Ookla (speedtest.net/global-index).

Generally, these countries can be divided into a few groups, including:
– countries with very fast mobile and fixed broadband connections and very high urbanization, e.g., UAE, Qatar, South Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Netherlands (most of these are small countries, except the United States).
– countries with fast fixed broadband and slightly slower mobile internet (usually combined with fairly high urbanization), e.g., Chile, Jordan, Taiwan, New Zealand, Hong Kong, United Kingdom.
– countries with very slow fixed and mobile internet and very low urbanization, e.g., Afghanistan, Tanzania.