By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Extreme Network’s David Coleman has made an attempt at answering this important question: What countries are the world’s most Wi-Fi friendly? Here are David’s results and his methodology.
According to a new ranking method developed by Extreme Networks’ David Coleman the world’s most Wi-Fi friendly country is Singapore, followed by South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, and Denmark. The rankings are the result of calculation scheme that combines Internet speed, public Wi-Fi availability, hotel connectivity, airport connectivity, and a number of other factors. The method is in no way official nor standardised but simply an attempt to quantify Wi-Fi friendliness in the most logical way.
“Raw speed is easy to measure, but anyone who travels knows that actual connectivity experience is far more nuanced. Can you get reliable Wi-Fi at the airport when you land? Is the hotel network usable for more than checking email? Can you sit in a café, open your laptop, and actually access the internet without roadblocks? Speed matters, but it’s only part of the story,” David Coleman says in a LinkedIn post here.
David Coleman says his study drew on data from Ookla, FTTH Council, Wireless Broadband Alliance, Freedom House (for rankings on Internet freedom and openness), and Skytrax (airline and airport ratings). Perhaps surprisingly, the US ranks only fourteenth on the list while the Nordic countries generally perform strongly. It could perhaps be reasonable to conclude that ‘Wi-Fi friendliness’ correlates closely with strong digital and transport infrastructure. Smaller more affluent nations may have an advantage in this regard although Japan and South Korea demonstrate that large countries can also perform well.
/Claus.
