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A new report examining the average broadband and mobile speeds globally has found that Ireland lags behind the countries it wants to emulate.
Ookla – best known for its Speedtest service that lets people see how good their broadband speed connection is – has revealed a new monthly ranking that charts the average fixed broadband and mobile download speeds of most countries on Earth.
Until now, Siliconrepublic.com and others have been reporting on its country-by-country reports, showing which broadband providers offer the best service. Now though, countries are being compared to one another, and Ireland is under the spotlight.
According to the rankings, Ireland ranks 37th in the world for fixed broadband download speeds with an average of 35.63Mbps, wedged in between Thailand at 35.94Mbps and Poland at 35.09Mbps.
Meanwhile, Ireland is ranked even lower when it comes to mobile download speeds, coming in at 53rd place with an average speed of 19.82Mbps, between Portugal on 19.86Mbps and Armenia at 19.76Mbps.
Declining stature
In both instances, Ookla found that, compared with the month prior to these figures being recorded, Ireland’s stature actually fell one place in both fixed broadband and mobile.
It does little to ease the concerns over Ireland’s plans for increasing broadband coverage and speed to the country under the National Broadband Plan, with a recent report finding that a third of Irish subscribers are getting less than or equal to 30Mbps of broadband speed, which is outlined as the minimum.
Best-performing countries
Looking elsewhere on the list, of the top five countries for fixed broadband, three are in Asia. Singapore is leading the charge at an average download speed of 154.38Mbps, with Iceland being the highest-ranked European country, at 110.52Mbps.
However, when it comes to mobile broadband, Europe is miles ahead, with the continent home to the four highest-ranked countries.
Topping that list by some distance is Norway at 52.59Mbps, followed by the Netherlands (46.94Mbps) and Hungary (46.24Mbps).
The worst-ranked country in the world for mobile broadband is Iraq, coming in at just 3.03Mbps, while Venezuela is 133rd in the world for fixed broadband with a download speed of 3.20Mbps.
