Libya Leads the World in Slowest Internet Connection Speeds

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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The average Internet connection speed in Libya is the slowest in the world at 0.5 Mpbs. Most of the other nations with speeds well below the global average are in Africa, another example of how it is a “have not” region, if access to broadband is a sign of economic prospects. The lack of access to news, email and basic search engines at remarkably low speeds, if these are available at all, marks an economy that does not have a significant hallmark of progress.

According to the new Akamai “State of the Internet” Q1 report:

In the first quarter of 2014, six qualifying countries/regions had average connection speeds of 1 Mbps or less, the same as last quarter. Bangladesh had an average connection speed of 1.0 Mbps, while Bolivia, Cameroon, Botswana, and Yemen had speeds of 0.9 Mbps.

As a contrast, the global average was 3.9 Mbps. And in country with the fastest speed — South Korea — that figure was 23.6 Mbps. Other Asian nations were at the top of the list, with Japan at 14.6 Mbps and Hong Kong at 13.3 Mbps. Northern Europe also has three countries in the top ten: Netherlands at 12.4 Mbps, Sweden at 11.6 Mbps and Finland at 10.7 Mbps.

In terms of number of Internet connections, the United States was in first place with 162,676,451, followed by China at 123,526,069. After those two nations, there is a large drop off, due primarily to population. Brazil was in third place at 41,298,694, Japan in fourth place at 40,042,679 and Germany at 37,176,422.

In terms of people connected to the internet, Libya was not even worth counting.

ALSO READ: The World’s Most Content (and Miserable) Countries

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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