Next time you’re cursing Verizon’s name, dangling halfway out a window to hold your laptop in that one spot in the alley between your building and the next where you can actually read your email, ask yourself: Does life have to be this way? And, more pressingly, do you still have a valid passport?
Cloud-services company Akamai released its latest “State of the Internet” report for the third quarter of 2016 last week. If you’re considering embracing an ex-pat lifestyle to chase down the dream of a better browsing experience, these countries — ranked by average connection internet speed in Mbps, megabits per second — are your best bets:
1. South Korea: 26.3
2. Hong Kong: 20.1
3. Norway: 20.0
4. Sweden: 19.7
5. Switzerland: 18.4
6. Singapore: 18.2
7. Japan: 18.0
8. Finland: 17.6
9. Netherlands: 17.3
10. Latvia: 16.9
11. Denmark: 16.6
12. United States: 16.3
South Korea is far and away the winner, with America clawing its way to a semi-respectable No. 12. (On the bright side, our national average connection speed is up nearly 7 percent since the previous quarter.) To put these numbers into perspective, the global average speed is 6.3 Mbps.
Within the U.S., D.C. outranks any single state for average connection speed. The top ten is composed almost entirely of states on the East Coast, with the notable exception of second-runner-up Utah. We see you, Beehive State.
1. District of Columbia: 24.8
2. Delaware: 21.4
3. Utah: 21.4
4. Massachusetts: 21.1
5. Rhode Island: 20.7
6. Maryland: 19.7
7. New Jersey: 19.4
8. New York: 19.0
9. Virginia: 19.0
10. Pennsylvania: 17.8
Why plan your next vacation around beaches, restaurants, or museums when you could build an entire itinerary around hunting down Google Fiber?