Romania has been ranked fourth in the world for connection speed in the third quarter of 2009. According to Akamai, the content delivery provider, which publishes a regular 'State of the Internet' report, the average world connection speed is 1.7 Mbps while, in Romania it is 6.2Mbps. Only South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong have a better average speed.
However, no Romanian city features in Akamai's top ten cities by region average measured connection speed listing. Europe is led by Lausanne, Switzerland which has an average connection speed of 24,767Kbps. The second European city is Presov in Slovakia with a speed of 14,276Kbps. In fact Slovakia features highly in the top ten with the cities of Zilina (4th), Kosice (8th) and Banskabystrica (10th).
The lowest average connection speed identified in the report was 43 Kbps on the island of Mayotte, located in the Indian Ocean between northern Madagascar and northern Mozambique.
I'm skeptical of the value of this type of ranking. Its worth taking into account that Romania has a low penetration rate for internet users. Figures from late 2008 show just 7.4 million internet users among a population of 22 million and broadband penetration of 8.8%. That will have risen but as more users put pressure on networks performance is likely to drop. Couple that with improved capacity continuously coming on stream in developed market and future surveys are likely to show very different rankings.
