Korea has overtaken Japan this year to become the nation with the fastest broadband connections in real terms, according to recent research.

 

Those two nations are also the only in Asia, and among only nine in the world, that will be ready to satisfy the bandwidth requirements of the short-term future, the study found.

 

Researchers within the business faculties of Oxford University and the University of Oviedo analyzed the results of 24 million broadband performance tests conducted by speedtest.net. 

 

The researchers combined download, upload and latency speed results to provide a weighted score of real-world performance, measured as broadband quality of service (BQoS).

 

Nearly all of the 66 countries analyzed have improved broadband performance since 2008, the researchers found, with 93.9% lifting download and upload speeds and overall BQoS, and 84.8% reducing latency.

 

Korea recorded the biggest improvement by far, boosting BQoS to 65.9 from 38.2 and narrowly edging out Japan.

 

But gains from these nations failed to boost APAC's standing on the rankings of average BQoS by region, where it remains in fourth place after Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe and North America.

 

Taiwan and Hong Kong are the next highest-ranked countries in the Asia-Pacific region, and the only remaining Asian nations which are easily able to meet the bandwidth requirements of today's web applications, the researchers said. But globally they are rated 23^rd and 25^th, respectively.

 

Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are able to meet the bandwidth requirements of today, but not comfortably, and are respectively ranked 28^th, 32^nd and 35^th.

 

The study was sponsored by Cicso.