Broadband internet is a relatively new technology. What was known as dial-up internet was the connection speed available until about the turn of the last century. Cable and upgraded phone lines increased that speed by over tenfold. Currently, the speed can be 100 times dial-up. And broadband has moved from cable and phone lines to wireless. Over 100 million smartphones have fast connections, and many have been upgraded to what is known as 5G wireless. This allows the downloads of large files, like movies, in a matter of minutes. Years ago, this could have taken hours.

Entertainment is not the only use of broadband. It also gives people access to news. Additionally, it has become the backbone of distance learning, which became an essential component of education during the pandemic. It also changed the way that businesses operated over video systems like Zoom, which could not exist without high internet speeds. For years, broadband was only available to developed countries. That has changed. Elon Musk has launched thousands of small satellites as part of his Starlink initiative, bringing broadband to almost everywhere in the world.

The Global Broadband Index from price comparison service provider Uswitch points out that “experiences of using the internet around the world can vary quite drastically. Factors such as infrastructure, investment and the overall size of a country can all potentially affect the performance of the internet.”

Among the findings is that Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations tend to have the fastest broadband speeds. That is the universe used to compare countries. The data source for the analysis was Speedtest Global Index, and median download speeds were measured in megabits per second (Mbps).

The nation with the fastest broadband speed is among the least developed, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Chile has the fastest internet, with a median download speed of 189.36 Mbps. This means a 1,500-megabyte movie file can be downloaded in one minute and three seconds. Chile’s GDP per capita is in the bottom third of those tracked by the OECD.

These are the 20 countries with the fastest internet speeds:

• Chile (189.36 Mbps)
• Denmark (163.60)
• United States (143.76)
• Spain (134.19)
• New Zealand (113.14)
• Japan (112.90)
• Switzerland (110.30)
• Norway (105.61)
• Netherlands (102.60)
• Sweden (102.08)
• Hungary (100.65)
• Canada (100.06)
• Portugal (99.62)
• South Korea (99.59)
• France (94.34)
• Luxembourg (92.10)
• Finland (89.60)
• Israel (87.98)
• Poland (86.20)
• Belgium (81.10)

Click here to see which are the 100 greatest movies ever made.

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