Many Germans are of the opinion that they enjoy lightning-fast Internet in their own four walls. In a country comparison with countries in Europe and the rest of the world, Germany should actually end up in one of the first places when it comes to average internet speed. But is that really true? A recent and extensive analysis has now found some surprising results.
Fast internet in Germany is just wishful thinking in many rural areas
Again and again in Germany there is talk of the country having to go digital and have faster internet. However, not much has happened in this regard in recent years: Especially in rural areas of the Federal Republic, you can only dream of fast internet with top speeds of 1 Gbit/s or more - it is not uncommon for people to surf here at Stone Age speeds.
But is there such an internet problem only in Germany or do you surf at a snail's pace in other countries as well? To get straight to the point: There are numerous countries whose inhabitants comb through the World Wide Web much faster than in Germany.
What internet speed can rival the superhero The Flash?
On June 15, the new DC film "The Flash" opened in Germany in cinemas, which is about a superhero who can move at lightning speed. This gave VPN provider ExpressVPN an idea: to see if there were any countries that could rival The Flash in terms of internet speeds.
In the analysis carried out, the film itself played an important role, for the purpose of a better one Clarification of the analysis results, ExpressVPN based on the average download speed of the strip. The company calculated exactly how long it would take to download the film in a modern 4K UHD version and then watch it offline on a streaming platform. "The Flash" has a playing time of around two and a half hours, which would correspond to a file size of around 17,5 GB for an available UHD version. Now all you had to do was determine the average internet speed in a wide variety of countries and use this to calculate how long it would take to download the file in question. The top 10 countries with the fastest internet speeds are surprising.
Asian countries do well in the ranking
When looking for the country with the fastest internet connection, one would probably spontaneously choose an Asian country, since Asia is ahead of the Europeans in many respects. In fact, with Singapore, an Asian country is also listed very high in the top 10 - but only in 2nd place. This is Singapore, where the average speed is 300,83 Mbit/s. Downloading the Flash film in UHD quality would take just 7 minutes and 45 seconds. However, Singapore is just beaten by a European country that secures first place in the ranking: We are talking about the tiny city-state of Monaco, which is home to around 39.500 people. On average, they can look forward to an Internet speed of 319,59 Mbit/s, which would make it possible to download the Flash film within 7 minutes and 18 seconds.
A rather surprising country is also in third place in the ranking: Chile secured the bronze medal with a speed of around 298,5 Mbit/s – in the country on the western side of South America, the film would be downloaded within 7 minutes and 49 seconds. With Hong Kong (4 Mbit/s, 5 minutes and 292,21 seconds) and mainland China (7 Mbit/s, 59 minutes and 280,01 minutes), places 8 and 20 again go to Asian countries, so that Asia with three countries in the in the world's top 10 fastest internet connections - quite an impressive result. Asia is even found four times in the top 10, because Thailand also came in 10th with 260,54 Mbit/s (8 minutes and 57 seconds). After all, the rest of the places in the top 10 go exclusively to European countries: Switzerland, France, Denmark and Romania gather in sequence on places 6 to 9.
Where is Germany?
Now, of course, the question immediately arises as to where Germany actually ended up in the ranking. At least the colleagues at ExpressVPN do not have a direct answer to this question, as you can only see the top 10 fastest and the top 10 slowest countries here. However has Statista.com published a similar statistic in 2023, which lists the fastest internet connections in the world. Germany only manages 52nd place – with an average speed of a meager 83,4 Mbit/s.
Particularly bitter: Even countries that are economically far worse off than us, such as Kuwait, Macau or Andorra, perform significantly better than Germany in the ranking. These alarming results should actually help Germany finally invest more money in digitization and integrate faster internet, especially in rural areas - but apparently the priorities in this country seem to be elsewhere at the moment.
It's actually even slower than in Germany
In contrast to the Eurovision Song Contest, Germany does not secure last place in the ranking of countries with the fastest Internet speed, because there are still numerous countries in which residents surf the Internet much more slowly.
For example, the third country with the slowest speeds is Afghanistan with an average download speed of 9,28 Mbit/s. Here, the full download of the Flash movie would take a whopping 4 hours and 11 minutes.
Things are even worse in Turkmenistan, where just 8,84 Mbit/s are available.
However, the undisputed leader in the negative ranking is Cuba: On the island state in the Caribbean you have to be content with a meager 7,21 Mbit/s, so surfing the net here is guaranteed not to be much fun. If you tried to download the Flash film in UHD quality here, you would have to plan a whopping 5 hours and 23 minutes for it.
