Malta ranks among the bottom quarter of EU countries for broadband speeds, according to a new worldwide test. With an average speed of 18.16Mbps, Malta ranked 47th in the world, behind 21 other EU countries.
At average speeds, it would take around 37 minutes to download a 5GB film in Malta, compared to just eight minutes in top-rated country Taiwan and more than 30 hours in Yemen at the very bottom of the rankings.
While Malta’s place in the annual ranking has remained nearly unchanged since 2017, its average internet speed has actually increased by around 78 per cent in the same time – from 10.17Mbps two years ago.
Within the EU, Sweden and Denmark topped the rankings with speeds around three times as fast as Malta.
The rankings were compiled by British comparison service Cable.co.uk, based on research carried out by M-Lab, a collaboration between Code for Science and Society, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Google and Princeton University’s PlanetLab.
Researchers conducted 276 million broadband speed tests across 207 countries to draw up the rankings.
Sweden and Denmark topped EU rankings
Worldwide, the study found that 37 of the top 50 fastest-performing countries were located in Europe, with 10 in Asia and the Pacific, two in North America, and just one in Africa. By contrast, 25 of the 50 slowest-performing countries are located in Africa and 12 in Arab States, with 10 in Asia and the Pacific, and three in South and Latin America.
141 countries failed to achieve average speeds above 10Mbps, a speed deemed by UK telecoms watchdog Ofcom to be the minimum required to cope with the needs of a typical family or small business.
“With average broadband speeds rising by 20.65 per cent in the last year the global picture looks rosy,” Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Cable.co.uk, said on the worldwide implications of the study.
“But the truth is faster countries are the ones lifting the average, pulling away at speed and leaving the slowest to stagnate. Last year, we measured the slowest five countries at 88 times slower than the five fastest. This year they are 125 times slower.”