Mobile broadband and most improved
While it recommended that users wishing to access ‘next generation' bandwidth-heavy services like watching HD internet TV will need an average download speed of 11Mbps and an upload speed of 5Mbps, it said that currently, the average upload speed across the globe is 1.7Mbps.
A group of 20 countries, including the UK, France and the USA were described as ‘comfortably enjoying today's applications' by the report, while it said that another 19 countries, including China and India are currently ‘below today's application threshold'.
The study will take an increasingly hard look at mobile internet access going forward, but noted that Sweden, Denmark, USA, and Spain are the world leaders in mobile broadband quality.
In good news for those on the go, it also found the latency of mobile broadband has improved by 45 percent in just one year, with an average download speed of 936Kbps, up over a third from last year and a 100 percent improvement for upload speeds too.
Tony Hart, associate fellow at Saïd Business School, said: "If I had to pick one key aspect of this year's study, it would be the unprecedented speed at which a country can become a broadband leader. While average broadband quality has improved by 20 percent in three years and penetration by 22 percent, some countries have seen improvements of over 50 percent in this time.
"Some emerging economies, such as Latvia and Bulgaria have been able to show improvements in broadband leadership of around 60 percent in just one year. Kenya has the record with a 174 percent improvement over three years-albeit from a very small starting point. Compared to the many growth-enabling infrastructures of the past - the telephone, electricity, railways, etc. - which took many decades or even centuries to impact the wider population, we can see that high quality Internet access can have an impact on the bulk of the population within just a few years, and its impact will reach the developing world much faster than any other technology of the past."
