While countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Norway top the list of the fastest mobile connections in the world, Chile ranks sixth in Latin America. Here, the complete ranking.

With the imminent arrival of 5G, providers and operators have faced the challenge of maintaining their connection speeds in a market that has only grown in recent years. Currently, according to Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence for the last quarter of 2021, the United Arab Emirates, Norway and South Korea top the list of fastest connections in the world, while Afghanistan, Venezuela and East Timor are in the last places.

The list of global positions is as follows:

Top 10 fastest mobile connections in the world:

• United Arab Emirates: 127.81 Mbps
• Norway: 107.50 Mbps
• South Korea: 98.93Mbps
• Qatar: 92.83Mbps
• Netherlands: 91.66Mbps
• Saudi Arabia: 88.35 Mbps
• Bulgaria: 83.71Mbps
• Cyprus: 81.41 Mbps
• Switzerland: 80.45
• Australia: 79.24Mbps

Top 10 slowest mobile connections in the world:

• East Timor: 5.17 Mbps
• Venezuela: 5.64 Mbps
• Afghanistan: 5.64 Mbps
• Palestine: 5.78 Mbps
• Ghana: 7.12Mbps
• Tajikistan: 8.11 Mbps
• Sudan: 8.74 Mbps
• Bangladesh: 8.91Mbps
• Somalia: 9.01
• Ivory Coast: 10.35 Mbps

To exemplify, Mario Saavedra, a technology expert, explains that in a country like the United Arab Emirates with 5G (about 5 to 6 times faster than 4G), a person could not need broadband and could share the internet from the phone. ”

This balance is a response to how the market has had to adapt to the new 5G network. According to the latest report published by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association, the fifth generation of mobile technologies is commercially available in 58 countries as of June 2021, 34.5% more than last year, where only 38 countries had implemented it, added to 12 more who were only able to join this technology partially.

Within this same world ranking, Chile is ranked number 118, and number 6 in Latin America with an average download speed of 13.19 Mbps. In addition, the Speedtest Intelligence ranking revealed that Claro was the fastest mobile operator among the main providers in Chile, with a Speed ​​Score of 24.44.

These data are even more specific. By measuring the consistency of each operator’s performance, they found that Claro had the highest degree of consistency in Chile during the third quarter of 2021, with 78.1% of results showing at least a minimum download speed of 5 Mbps and a speed of 1 Mbps minimum upload.

In technical terms, the company exceeds the 5Mbps speed expectation that is needed, for example, to watch a streaming HD video on platforms such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. Their weighting between 90% of the download speed that is used to receive files of all kinds and 10% upload speed for sending information, have an average that positions them above the rest of the operators at the national level.

“Chile has consistently invested in infrastructure development, which has allowed it to be a leader in the region in terms of speed,” says Felipe Gómez, Claro Chile’s Director of Marketing and Development. “It is precisely this perspective that has allowed the network to perform optimally during the pandemic, a period in which demand has increased to levels never seen before. In fact, at Claro we have been recognized for five consecutive years as the fastest mobile network in the country by various rankings. This has allowed us to develop different products, especially to improve the video and streaming experience”, explains the executive.

Whether countries can make progress in this area and improve their performance depends on several factors. Technology expert Mario Saavedra explains that the main ones are directly related to infrastructure. “There has been a lot of talk about investments over the 10 billion pesos to do it. Covering all of Chile is a challenge due to the age of the infrastructure, where the oldest antennas no longer provide the width of the available technology, and without this change there could be no coverage. In the country the infrastructure changes depending on where you are, it is not even. Currently, the antennas are unevenly deployed throughout the regions”, he says.

The second factor is the technology that is distributed from those antennas. Here in Chile it is still 4G. Although there are good spaces for experimentation, such as those that have been delivered by Claro in the company of the Catholic University of Chile, it has not yet been possible to implement it at the user level. In that case, the 5G network could only work throughout the national territory if the technology, infrastructure and cellular device are up to par.

The new technological needs

The UNCTAD Report on Technology and Information 2021 reveals that Chile is ranked number 2 on the list of Latin American countries that are prepared to implement cutting-edge technologies, such as robotics, big data, photovoltaic solar energy, 3D printing and of course 5G.