A new study reveals the fastest internet speeds in Europe – and the UK is trailing way behind.
Researchers from BusinessComparison.com tested how long it took to load a webpage on mobile or desktop in 30 European countries.
Britain comes in at 15th on mobile loading times and performs even worse on desktop, coming in at 17th.
While British broadband is still faster than the European average, Brits experience load times almost a full second longer than countries at the top.
Sweden tops the tables for both desktop and mobile internet speeds, the experts found.
Mobile internet speeds in Europe are much slower on mobile than on desktop, although the UK ranks slightly higher coming in at 15th
Sweden ranks top for fastest desktop internet as well as mobile, while the UK trails behind
Sam White, digital content executive at BusinessComparison.com, says the study has ‘analysed the average web page loading speed over both desktop and mobile devices for each country in Europe, using the figure for how long it would take the page to load for a visitor in the domestic market.’
Using this method, the study found that the average time taken to load a webpage in Europe is 5.17 seconds on desktop and 8.78 on mobile.
Mr White suggests that this may be due to the UK’s ageing mobile infrastructure, citing Ofcom data showing only 48 per cent of homes have full-fibre broadband.
Recently, London was ranked 76 out of 200 cities for the fastest internet speed worldwide.
Other studies have also shown that adventurers in the Arctic Circle have broadband ten times faster than half a million households in rural Britain.
Britain ranks 15th out of 30 for the fastest internet speeds in the country according to a new study
For desktop, Sweden came out on top with the fastest load speeds in Europe and was followed by Finland, Denmark, and Latvia
Britain might rank in the middle of the table for fastest speeds but it is still a good deal faster than average.
In the UK it takes an average time of 4.67 seconds to load a desktop page and 8.26 seconds to load a mobile page.
For desktop loading times, Sweden is the fastest by some distance, taking only 3.74 seconds to load a page.
This is followed by Finland at 3.84 seconds, with Denmark and Latvia tying for third place with load times of 4 seconds.
It takes considerably longer to load a page on mobile than it does on desktop – 3.6 seconds longer, on average.
Mobile loading times were 3.6 seconds longer on average than on desktop but Sweden still ranks first for the fastest loading times
Mr White said: ‘There are several reasons for this – while desktop browsers are able to cope with media and image files, these will often cause mobile browsers difficulty due to the larger size of these files.
‘Mobile devices can also be slow to load internet pages if there is a poor connection in the area or if the user has a large number of web browsing tabs or even other apps open.’
However, even with slower speeds compared to desktop, Sweden still has by far the fastest mobile internet speeds with a page loading in 7.48 seconds.
In second place is Denmark with average times of 7.65 seconds. followed by Finland and Latvia with 7.8 and 7.93 second load times respectively.
At the bottom of the table is Turkey, where BusinessComparison.com says that outdated copper wires contribute to slower speeds on Desktop
The bottom three countries were the same for both mobile and desktop browsing with Turkey being followed by Bulgaria and Romania
At the bottom of the table is Turkey for both mobile and desktop move speeds, taking 10.22 seconds to load a page on desktop and 13.19 seconds on mobile.
In addition to having suffered devastating earthquakes in February which have disrupted services, Mr White says that Turkey has outdated internet infrastructure.
Mr White writes: ‘There are issues with Turkey’s internet connectivity on the whole, with much of the country relying on 30-year-old copper cables rather than more modern cables, which can transmit more data faster and further, with less signal loss.’
Bulgaria comes in second-last for both desktop and mobile, with speeds of 9.39 and 12.89 seconds respectively.
Finally, Romania has the third-lowest speeds at 8.59 seconds for desktop and 11.91 seconds for mobile.
