Global broadband report disappointing

Cisco’s report into global broadband speed has just been published and the findings confirm what many users know; that typical broadband speeds in their country are crap!

The top 10 countries for broadband quality are:

South Korea
Japan
Hong Kong
Sweden
Switzerland
Netherlands
Singapore
Luxembourg
Denmark
Norway

Those countries are defined as already having broadband coverage that is designed for future needs.

However, outside of that elite group, we find a disappointing picture! There’s a second group of countries, who have broadband access which, on average, is comfortably able to handle the broadband requirements of today – but not the future.

Here’s the full list of countries in this second group:

Switzerland
Czech Republic
Norway
United States
Slovakia
Portugal
Finland
France
Germany
Hungary
Russia
Belgium
Slovenia
Taiwan
Austria
Hong Kong

Every other country is defined as unable to comfortably meet the requirements of broadband users today or unable to meet their needs at all! The UK comes an embarrassingly low 25th out of the 66 countries in Cisco’s research.

It’s hard to believe that so few countries have the infrastructure to cope with the needs of high-end web users today or ‘regular’ web users of the near future. This lack of capability will make it harder for developers to bring us next generation web technologies, because they will lack the market share required to run broadband intensive services.

On behalf of everyone in a country outside of the top list: