CYPRUS INTERNET SPEED GETS FASTER - RESEARCH

 Cyprus Mail 3 September 2020 - by Gina Agapiou

Cyprus’ internet speed saw a 42 per cent increase within the last year, aligned with a global broadband speed rise.

The island ranked 89 out of 221 countries after tests in research designed and compiled by Cable.co.uk, and gathered by M-Lab, an open source project .Cyprus’ mean download speed was 15.62 Mbps, and it takes about 43 minutes to download a 5GB movie, the survey showed.

The country with the fastest internet connection is Liechtenstein with 229.98 Mbps and ability to download a 5GB movie in less than 3 minutes. Malta ranks 13th with 87.36Mbps and taking less than 8 minutes to download a 5G movie. Turkey holds the 117 place with 8.86Mbps and a more than one hour wait on the 5G movie download.

The slowest broadband speed holds South Sudan with 0.58Mbps, while users in the area have to wait 19 and a half hours for 5G movie to download.

Globally, the average download speed was 24.83Mbps, higher than that of Cyprus. But the average time taken to download a 5GB movie globally was more than 2 hours, about three times more than the amount it needs for people living in Cyprus to download the same movie.

This country’s annual increase is double the global percentage increase. Tracking broadband speed measurements across multiple 12-month periods showed about 20 per cent annual increase in the last four years globally, half of that of Cyprus. This year, a total of 577,488,512 tests were carried out in all countries compared with the 276 million tests in 207 countries which formed last year’s data set.

Cyprus average speed is rising fast- but needs more improvement.

Over the last decade, Cyprus’ average broadband speed increased significantly, to 15.62 Mbps from 11 Mbps in a survey from WebsiteToolTester published in the beginning of the year. In 2012 the average internet speed on the island was 2.77 Mbps which rose to 6.9 Mbps in the first quarter of 2017.

Despite the improvement, the country has yet to reach the European Union objectives for 2020. EU has set a target for the use of next generation networks (NGN), in other words internet connection of 100 Mbps or more, by 50 per cent of households by 2020, and all the households by 2025.

Moreover, the recent upgraded platform showed that the top 100 countries, which includes Cyprus, have increased their average broadband speed by 142.98 per cent. While the bottom 100 countries have increased their average broadband speed by 62.54 per cent.