Singapore lags behind China, Mongolia, Kyrgyztan in Internet upload speed

[Watchman]

Tuesday, September 08, 2009
Singapore lags behind China, Mongolia, Kyrgyztan in Internet upload speed

Pity the blogger and anyone else who wants to upload a file or a photo on the Internet from Singapore. Even people in Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia can upload stuff faster, not to mention those in Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan and China.

You don't have to take my word for it. Visit Speedtest.net and check out the stats.

Singapore ranks 51st in the world with an average Internet upload speed of 0.75 Mbps, reported the Straits Times newspaper in Singapore, quoting AFP, a few days ago.

The average download speed is faster – at 7.32 Mbps, Singapore is ranked 24th in the world. America is 28th, reported AFP, quoting the Communications Workers of America.

But that's comparing apples with oranges. Singapore is a city-state whose Internet connection speeds should be compared with those of other cities.



This chart is taken from Speedtest.net where, if you dig deeper, you will find Singapore lags behind not only Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea but any number of American cities and the 10 top regions in the UK, which include areas in Greater London, Plymouth, South Yorkshire and Scotland.


Internet download speeds range from 9.98 Mbps to 8.53 Mbps in parts of Greater London. That puts them on a par with Hong Kong (9.38Mbps ), Slovakia (8.66 Mbps ) and Germany (8.45 Mbps), which rank among countries with the fastest Internet connections in the world.

Did I say "Slovakia"? Yes, sir, the list of countries with the fastest Internet download speeds is full of surprises, as you can see from the chart:
South Korea (21.21 Mbps)
Japan (15.83 Mbps)
Aland Islands (autonomous province of Finland, 15.18 Mbps)
Lithuania (13.21 Mbps)
Sweden (13.09 Mbps)
Latvia (12.94 Mbps)
Romania .(12.56 Mbps)
Netherlands (11.89 Mbps)
Bulgaria (11.81 Mbps)
Moldova (9.73 Mbps)
Hong Kong (9.38 Mbps)
Slovakia (8.66 Mbps)
Germany (8.45 Mbps)
Portugal (8.32Mbps)

If we move out of the country category, however, California boasts some of the fastest Internet connections. The average download speed is 37.70 Mbps in Stanford, 24.82 Mbps in La Jolla, 19.31 Mbps in Davis – all university towns – and 18.75 Mbps in Cupertino, headquarters of Apple.

Yet, California is not even on the US top 10 list.

The top 10 US states in download speeds are:
Delaware ( 11.33 Mbps)
Washington (10.52 Mbps)
Rhode Island (10.35 Mbps)
Massachusetts (9.66 Mbps)
New Jersey (9.26 Mbps)
Virginia (9.12 Mbps)
New Hampshire (8.48 Mbps)
New York (8.41 Mbps)
Connecticut (8.11 Mbps)
Arizona (8.09 Mbps)

Again, they all include centres of higher education and the new economy.

But the average US download speed is 6.86 Mbps – slower than Singapore's – and the average upload speed 1.53 Mbps – twice as fast as Singapore's. China's average upload speed is 1.19 Mbps, but download is really slow – 4.54 Mbps at its fastest, in Hunan province.

Upload speeds in Asia are fastest in:
Japan ( 7.09 Mbps)
Hong Kong (4.95 Mbps)
Russia (4.67 Mbps)
South Korea (3.0 Mbps)
Mongolia (1.73 Mbps)
Taiwan (1.66 Mbps)
Georgia (1.54 Mbps)
Kyrgyzstan (1.23 Mbps)
China (1.19 Mbps)

 

[hairylee]

How come we not number one.

 

[singveld]

censorship and profit is more important than internet speed.

 

[singveld]

What's next? BirdTorrent?

Zoom
Carrier pigeons are an ancient way to transmit information. As we've seen in many movies, one would tie a small scrolled message to the leg of a pigeon before sending it flapping off to warn its recipient of impending danger.

Today we have much more modern and efficient ways to transmit information… or do we? If you're an internet user in South Africa on the Telkom ISP, you might have better results with the old ways.

A worker at a Durban IT company was very unhappy with the performance of Telkom's ADSL speed. As a result, he decided to pit a carrier pigeon armed with a 4 GB USB stick against a plain file transfer.


By the time Winston reached his destination, only 4 percent of the file had transferred. The BBC report does not specify the full size of the file, but did say that Winston completed his journey in 1 hour and 8 minutes, while the internet transfer required an additional hour to complete.

ISP Telom said that it couldn't be held responsible for the slow transfer speeds to the IT company, as it has helped to advise the company in possible improvements, but thus far none have been accepted.