When it comes to Internet access, not all plans are created equal. The data transfer speeds vary greatly around the world, as does the cost for basic access. As you can see, in Japan Internet speeds are blazing fast and cheap compared to those less fortunate users in other countries. In the United States, Internet users pay more for way less, but are still better off than users in Greece who connect at the slowest speeds in the world.
Note: Because minimum, maximum, and average speeds vary by country and region, we normalized the data to calculate speed and cost per 1MBPs in each area.
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{ 56 comments… read them below or add one }
Greece is not “one of the slowest in the world”. Its number 20 in the world. Read the title of the picture.
I think that chart shows Greece as 30th.
actually that was turkey
No price-per-month label for Australia?
What about the download caps in each country?
Who paid for this? USA is ranked 65th in the World for its internet speed and cost per mbs. Asia was left out and their cost and speed is much lower then here, that is why my server is in Taiwan. You really think comparing 30 Countries gives any idea of the real picture
Asia… is a continent. Japan and Korea are both part of Asia.
But your point is still valid.
To think that the usual broadband fee without bandwidth cap per month for a 1 mbps is about rm 88 (1 usd is about rm 3 something) over here; I consider poland cheap.
People in the US pay a flat rate for unlimited usage. How can that be compared to countries with bandwidth caps and variable billing?
I am not sure where you are, but I would love for my house (USA, in the Midwest) to have this. If your friends are getting flat-rate, unlimited, internet in the US, please have them let me know how.
East coast = flat rate no cap. Although maybe if you have Comcrap they might be capping things soon…
That’s what happens when your scum bag local governments overstep their authority and subvert market competition. Luckily there are a few forces working against their anti-free market stupidity now, but of course I’m sure people will continue to blame the free market for problems created by government suppression of a free market…
My own personal experience of living in Australia and the UK tells me these figures cannot be correct. In Australia speeds are generally low (0.5 mbps) in all but the centre of our capital cities, and costs around $70 US for 40GB. In the UK, speeds are generally 3mbps, with fair availability of 20mbps, and costs around $30 US for uncapped, unlimited data.
I’m from Finland and I don’t think the average speed here is anywhere near that number. The cost per Mbit seems right though.
You might want to revise the Iberian peninsula part of your drawing of Europe. It is somewhat…mangled. Portugal seems to have either sunk into the Atlantic or taken flight and hovered over to Spain.
In portugal you can get a 100mbps/20mbps fiber optic connection, with no download caps for 50 euros, from the 3 major ISP’s (triple play service, TV, Phone, Internet) and one company has a simetric 150mbps (down and up) internet only for 30 euros, no download limits.
I live in south africa so this is especially agitating….
Thanks for the ping on Portugal map issue, we’ll have that fixed ASAP. The bulge out of Spain should have been a dead giveaway…
Things in this infographic maybe skewed in some ways, but i can attest to the ridiculous speeds attained in Japan.
The two different companies I have had here so far have out preformed comcast in every way. Comcast seems like telegraph technology compared to what im getting here.
Actually, the max speeds in Portugal are 200M/10M @ 100€ and 1G symmetric @ 250€ for uncaped triple play, but the geographic availability is limited.
http://www.zon.pt/OnlineStore/Services/Packs.aspx
It just means that US is more efficient at using their small bandwidth. Even though we are the one of the slowest internet providers, no once can beat US for its innovation in internet pioneering technologies.
in korea my Pc is like a old version of dual core (so the pc is like kinda old) but still download speed is up to 8mgs so it downloads a movie in about 2minutes
and the internet speed is 100M. My friend uses internet speed of 1000M but the speed he actaully gets is about 500M
cause his PC is a reck
And if you go to a PC cafe(where you pay money to use one) it’s 1000M cause the PC’s are good. at PCcafes games big as 10gigas download less than 8minutes
and the price here are 100M/10mgs = 17$ 300M/?=28$ 1000M/??=35$
it’s absolutly a world of internet here.
sure.. and pigs can fly. You know why I don’t believe you? you said 10 gigabytes in 8 minutes. Well bite this: there’s no way you can copy a 10 gigabyte file offline in 8 minutes, because the hard disk cannot cope with that kind of speed. sure you can reach it if you’re using SSDs, but what kind of internet cafe would use the extremely expensive SSDs just so you can copy file faster?
10 Gigabytes in 8 minutes is actually only 21 Megabytes in second. If your HDD cannot handle that, its very old one or you need to do some defrag asap. In fact todays average HDD (Not SSD) write/read speed is about ~100 MB/sec.
You hit the nail. I agree about the avg hdd speed.But can 8mbps download speed be possible that too so cheap?
I am from India and the plans here are complete crap.
13.3$ per month for an unlimited plan with download speed of 64kbps
@ sads which part of the country (INDIA) are you in, I pay $14/month for 512kbps.. and around $20/month for a 3Mbps line. Looks like you havent explored the market fully.
Hi, could you please post also the raw data you used to compile this? I’ve tried searching for your stated source “internet world stats broadband penetration” and unfortunately can’t track it down. Thanks! I’m hoping to do some telecommuting from outside of the US while traveling and it would be helpful for my planning my itinerary.
High cost for Mexico is due the monopoly of Telmex, which is proprietor Carlos Slim one of but the rich ones of the world. poor Mexico
What about South America? Chile is on the forefront of technology regarding internet usage. Prices are reasonable, speed is definitely good, and there is WIFI provided by the government for free in a few cities, something that you don’t see in countries like France, for example.
Why isn’t South America considered?
Dear,
Asia is the hot spot now.. You blew your information by ignoring countries other than Korea and Japan..I am from Singapore and I feel that its one of the best!
Where can you get a poster size print?
My question is why does the US have such a slow internet speed?
What difference would it make to our economy if our internet speed was as fast as say Japan …?
US 4.8 mbps VS Japan 61 mbps
What is entailed in speeding up our it service?
Thats easy. Check out the size of Japan compared to the size of the US. Now take into account the Governing standards of the US. Each state governs itself and is in charge of running its own lines if they want. So yea some really big cities have really high speeds as they have a population that would make it worth wild to install. Lots of places dont. Unlike in Japan you are not always “near” a big city.
I am not sure about the validity of the cost per 1 Mbps metric – what does that really mean? Do you just take the average of the monthly charge paid divided by the Mbps measured? That doesn’t really tell you much unless two users pay the same amount or have the same throughput. For example, beyond a certain level more the double the speed for double the cost is not necessarily better (especially for low income users doing basic web surfing), though in your benchmark it would look that way.
For many users at the low end of the speed range, having any kind of “always on” connectivity = wide geographic coverage is more important than raw speed. It’s better to have < 1 MBbps access for 90% of the population than say 20 Mbps access for only 10% and none for the rest.
Highly urbanized countries with high population density are at an advantage here, because more people live within a certain distance of a switch, without having to use repeaters or string more cable. It's easy to install cheap fast broadband if you're willing to put up with high rents for crowded apartments. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Yes, I enjoy high speed internet at very reasonable prices here in Japan, but at 4500 EUR per square meter of land to build a home for my family, "cheap" comes at a high price.
P.S. Korea seems to have been reunified already according to this map — North Korea's territory is included in the diagram for South Korea.
$1-5 for 1mbps/month in Australia?? You’re dreaming, mate!
(although the speed is about right lol)
What about the status of Middle east and Africa region…
I am in India. And with BSNL EVDO 3G, I get the fastest available speed in India i.e. 4 Mbps. And the second best thing about it is the unlimited usage at fixed monthly charge of just $15. (Rs. 700/-)
I enjoy it!!!!! But, not my other friends. They get a speed hardly close to 512 Kbps. So, they are a little jealous of my connection. India is # 151 in Internet Speeds… (According to an article in Hindustan Times).
We need a lot of improvement in this area…
mbps , its in bits , if u convert in bytes its around only 500 kbps .
Please advise a broadband vendor in New York at $3.33. I can only concur with other comments that this data is unusable. Journalist, please help us understand your methodology and point us to corroborating data.
India is far behind , 1 mbps cost = 35$ per month .
in suriname(part of south america) i cough op 135 us for 512kbps.i think we have the most expensive internet service in the world.
Oh really? What about Angola (southern Africa) where the best ISP is charging $900/month for 10MBs with 150Gb limit data usage!!!!
In japan, the massive majority of the population is urban-based, so the cost of building infrastructure would be much smaller to cover a small percentage of a country slightly smaller than California. Also, they don’t have the CWA and other unions driving up the cost of labor, though they do have their own unique problems which might be of equal expense. If you had to build a high speed network in California and you ONLY had to cover the major cities and the areas in corridors between them, the costs would be significantly lower, as compared to the entirely of the US in which the population is split between urban areas and suburban/rural areas.
Country Name: Jordan
Internet Speed: 2 Mbps
Cap: 10-12GB/Month (up&down)
Ping (to yahoo.com using Wimax): 280-380 (varies a lot, not sure but not 30-50 !!!)
Price: 38-42 USD/Month
Highest Speed(ADSL): 8 Mbps (line quality:not good)
Cap: 50 GB/Month
Price: 94 USD/Month
Salary (Young average joe): 350-550 USD (starting salary)
Apartment rent (1-3 rooms): 150-450 USD (low to medium)
Cola can 330ml (Cheapest type): 42.3 cent
Meal (average joe meal): 4.30 – 8.50 USD
Fast food (Mcdonald and so): 5.50 – 7.75 USD (Combo meal, no side dishes)
My friend in US telling most of Internet with CAP,,for example, Camcaster with 250GBps/ Month
also others like ATT, Waner cable, most ISP has CAP, average with 50GBps/Month..
How people in US, can enjoy new media such as HD movie, High resolution pics,,?
this makes US more behind internet world, still US in only country charging Incoming Cellular phone,, can you believe this?
In Iran the internet price is very high and the speed is very low
the government has limited the internet speed for home use to 128kbit/s
I myself use ADSL connection with speed of 128kbit/s and data usage of 3GB/month for about 12US$/month and i think i got lucky because I am one of the 700,000 from 27,000,000 internet users that use ADSL and the rest are still using dial up connection
Greece 24mb/s costs about 30 USD but line’s quality is really bad u get about 1-2 @ download and about 100kb/s upload speed :(
In Bangladesh I have to pay for 1MBPS internet connection $50, though upload speed 15kbps
in the philippines, 2.5mbps is around 50-60 USD. while 10mbps is around 200-300 USD
we pay $60 for 1Mbps bandwidth here in Indonesia…and the line quality is bad :(
in romania the biggest provider RCS-RDS, offers speed of 100Mb/s, unlimited download/uppload, fiber optics, for 15 dollars/month. I hardly belive that’s another place where internet is cheaper.
Escuse my bad english.
Mexico’s offerings are not bad, still expensive and unstable. The following are the best:
Axtel –> 100mb – Simetric – $200 USD (Only major cities, unlimited local calls, asimetric $167 USD)
10mb – Simetric – $80 USD (same as above, asimetric $67 USD)
Cable –> 6mb – Asimetric – around $80 USD (unlimited/limited local calls, digital cable) – There are more expensive packages up to 20mb in some cities
Iusacell (mobile) –> up to 20mb – $50 USD (limited coverage, cap 10GB)
Telmex –> 2mb – Asimetric – $50 USD (200 national calls) There’s a $80 USD 5mb package
**Caps not known, except for mobile carriers.
Very fun that you got to run part of the race w/ Brian. Youre a strong runner, and I think THATS why this infamous race was a cakewalk for you!
oh ur sooo lucky, in saudi arabia we pay $60 a month for 1mb and upload 0.5
that fucked up
India is uncomparable as most isp’s impose really low transfer caps of 10-30gb on connections. for eg one could get a 2mbps connection at 25 dollars, but after 30 gb of downloads u would be downgraded to a 256 kbps connection cause of some shitty fup poilcies by major providers. So anyone who uses the internet for anything other than surfing r out of luck.
As a student in Sweden I pay roughly 15 USD for 100/100. I’m getting like 96/88 out of it. As a non-student, I paid like 30 USD for the same speed. Unlimited usage, of course.
In Egypt, It’s 145 EGPs for 1Mbps