The 23 countries in the world with the fastest internet speeds

Ookla

• Broadband speed varies depending on the country you're located - i  t even varies from one region to another within countries. 
• British data analysis firm Cable analysed 200 countries according to their average broadband speed. 
• The United States of America has shockingly low internet speeds compared with other smaller places around the world. 

---

Broadband speed doesn't just differ from one country to another; it also varies depending on the area you're located within a country, according to the  Worldwide Broadband Speed League 2018  . 

The data used to produce the league,  compiled by British data analysis firm Cable  , ranks 200 countries according to their average broadband speed in megabits per second. 

The analysis was collated by M-Lab, a partnership between New America's Open Technology Institute, Google Open Source Research, Princeton University's PlanetLab and other supporting partners, and compiled by Cable between June 2017 and May 2018. 

Here are the 23 countries in the world where broadband internet is fastest. 

23. France — 24.23 megabits per second

The largest country by area in the EU, France is also known as 'the hexagon'.

 Greg Sandoval/Business Insider

22. Madagascar — 24.87 megabits per second

The Republic of Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world by area.

 Anisha Shah

21. Slovakia — 25.3 megabits per second

Slovakia's capital, Bratislava, is the only one in the world to border two countries.

 Wikimedia Commons / Marc Ryckaert

20. United States — 25.86 megabits per second

Three of the world's five oldest rivers are located in the US: The New, the Susquehanna, and the French Broad Rivers are hundreds of millions of years old.

 turtix/Shutterstock

19. Hong Kong — 26.45 megabits per second

Many think of Hong Kong as a city but with its own currency, immigration channels, and legal system, there's actually a full international border between Hong Kong and China.

 zhangyuqiu/Shutterstock

18. Andorra — 27.14 megabits per second

The sixth-smallest nation in Europe, Andorra sits in the eastern Pyrenees, bordered by France in the north and Spain in the south.

 wuthrich didier/Shutterstock

17. Lithuania — 27.417 megabits per second

Lithuania is one of the countries of which the 'Baltic States' are comprised, but the states don't share political unity.

Flickr Creative Commons / specchio.nero

16. Spain — 27.19 megabits per second

The Kingdom of Spain is the second largest country in the EU by area.

 Flickr Creative Commons / Christian Jiménez

15. Estonia — 27.91 megabits per second

Tallinn, Estonia's capital, is sometime dubbed the Silicon Valley of Europe as it has the continent's highest number of startups per head of population.

 Nathan Lund/ Wikimedia Commons

14. Taiwan — 29.09 megabits per second

To this day, most countries don't recognise Taiwan as an independent country.

 Alexander Koerner/Getty Images

13. Latvia — 28.63 megabits per second

Latvia had two colonies at one point: St. Andrews Island, now Kunta Kinteh Island in the Gambia River, and Tobago in the Caribbean.

 Bryan Ledgard / Flickr Creative Commons

12. Japan — 28.94 megabits per second

Japan, which is made up of over 6,800 islands, is mostly forest or mountains.

 Flickr / Giuseppe Milo

11. Switzerland — 29.92 megabits per second

Geneva is home to the second-largest of the four major office sites of the United Nations.

 Flickr Creative Commons / Pedro Szekely

10. Jersey — 30.9 megabits per second

Jersey, which is a Crown dependency and not strictly speaking a country, has its own financial, legal and judicial systems.

 fritz16/Shutterstock

9. Hungary — 34.01 megabits per second

Hungary shares borders with Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine.

ZGPhotography/Shutterstock

8. Luxembourg — 35.14 megabits per second

Luxembourg is the only Grand Duchy in the world.

 Flickr Creative Commons / Andrey Filippov 安德烈

7. The Netherlands — 35.95 megabits per second

The Netherlands is the most densely populated nation in Europe.

 Norbert Reimer / Flickr Creative Commons

6. Belgium — 36.71 megabits per second

Aside from Spain, Belgium was at one point the only country in the world to have two living kings.

 Flickr Creative Commons / Jiuguang Wang

5. Romania — 38.6 megabits per second

With an area of 360,000 square metres, the Parliament Palace in Romania's capital of Bucharest is the second largest parliamentary building in the world.

 Flickr/Stefan Jurca

4. Norway — 40.12 megabits per second

Norway is suspected to have the world's largest sovereign wealth fund, estimated to be worth $1 trillion by 2020.

Wikimedia Commons / Nik

3. Denmark — 43.99 megabits per second

Denmark is an archipelago made up of over 100 islands, some of which are not even inhabited.

 Pocholo Calapre / Shutterstock.com

2. Sweden — 46 megabits per second

Over 50% of Sweden is covered by forest but there are also around 100,000 lakes and over 24,000 islands across the country.

 Flickr Creative Commons / Ray Swi-hymn

1. Singapore — 60.39 megabits per second

Singapore is one of three surviving city-states in the world, including Monaco and the Vatican.

 Flickr Creative Commons / Brian Evans