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The US is way behind much of the world when it comes to internet speeds

What do Romania, Latvia, Bulgaria, and the UK all have in common?

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All of these countries have, on average, faster internet than the United States.

The US, which is the largest economy in the world in terms of GDP, doesn't even crack the top 20 countries when it comes to average peak internet connection speed.

It comes in 24th place, behind Taiwan, Macao, Russia, Thailand, and Japan, among other countries. 

keyboard cat
Keyboard Cat is not amused with the US ranking. YouTube/chuckieart

The data comes from Akamai, a cloud services provider that helps deliver content online, which each quarter publishes a "State of the Internet" report

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Here are the 10 countries in the world with the fastest average peak connection speed, according to Akamai:

akamai average peak internet speed worldwide
Akamai

David Belson, the senior director of industry and data intelligence at Akamai, told Tech Insider that average peak connection speed, rather than just average speed, is a better representation of what internet connections are capable of. Average speed, he said, can be affected by factors outside of the control of service providers like Comcast or Verizon. 

"Average peak is going to measure, in some fashion, the availability and adoption of “larger pipes” in a country, while the average is more influenced by how those “pipes” are used," Belson wrote in an email to Tech Insider.

Belson said that a number of factors contribute to where a country falls on the list, like population density, how much competition there is internet service providers, the geography and size of a country, and how much, if at all, a country's government supports the rollout of high speed internet.

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Here are the top 25 countries in terms of average peak connection speeds. The number next to each country is the peak Mbps.

  1. SINGAPORE 108.3
  2. HONG KONG 94.8
  3. SOUTH KOREA 83.3
  4. JAPAN 75.1
  5. TAIWAN 74.5
  6. ROMANIA 72.1
  7. QATAR 71.7
  8. ISRAEL 71.4
  9. SWEDEN 62.8
  10. MACAO 62.6
  11. LATVIA 61.9
  12. NETHERLANDS 60.9
  13. JERSEY 60.2
  14. SWITZERLAND 59.4
  15. BELGIUM 57.3
  16. ICELAND 55.6
  17. RUSSIA 54.2
  18. FINLAND 53.2
  19. HUNGARY 51.7
  20. THAILAND 51.5
  21. LUXEMBOURG 51.2
  22. BULGARIA 51
  23. UNITED KINGDOM 50.9
  24. UNITED STATES 50.4
  25. NORWAY 50
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