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Norway has slowest internet in Scandinavia

Norway has the slowest internet in Scandinavia and has even slipped behind former eastern block countries such as Romania, the Czech Republic and Latvia, according to a new global report.

Norway has slowest internet in Scandinavia
A woman shopping on the internet. Photo: Robert Schlesinger / NTB scanpix
According to the report, by US cloud service Akamai, information zips around Norway's internet at an average of 11.4 Mbps, ranking it only 15th worldwide. 
 
Sweden, which came fourth place worldwide, led the field in Europe with an average speed of 14.6Mbps, followed by Switzerland at 14.5Mbps. Finland came 10th at 12.1Mbps, followed by Denmark in 11th at 11.9Mbps.  
 
 Torgeir Waterhouse of IKT-Norge, Norway's ICT industry trade body, told Aftenposten newspaper that Norway's lowly position in the ranking showed that the government should do more.  
 
”It is important the we adapt to better our broadband development and that obstacles are removed, be it the municipalities or other bodies in the public sector,” he said. 
 
South Korea enjoys the world's fastest internet, with an average speed of 22.2 Mbps, followed by Hong Kong and Japan. 
 
The report also shows that there are big differences in the speed of broadband in different areas in Norway, with only 22% of IP-adresses reaching 15 Mbps or more. In South Korea, that number is 61%.
 
”There are big differences throughout the country, but it is not a classic town-country problem,” Waterhouse said. “We see that there are towns and villages in the country that have good internet.” 
 
The Ministry of Transport and Communications have announced an investment of $37m to develop fast broadband in areas where it is not profitable. 
 
Reynir Jóhannesson, political secretary at the ministry, told the paper that Norway had a problem with poor internet infrastructure.  
 
”There are many measures we can take that all have their strengths and weaknesses, but nonetheless there is to great a difference in speed between those with good and those with poor broadband,” he said. “I understand that poor broadband can be a challenge. It’s one thing to be able to stream video, but broadband is also important for businesses. It's about wealth and about creating jobs.” 

INTERNET

EU greenlights €200M for Spain to bring super fast internet speeds to rural areas

Brussels has approved a plan which will bring high-speed broadband internet to the almost 1 in 10 people in Spain who live in underpopulated rural areas with poor connections, a way of also encouraging remote workers to move to dying villages. 

EU greenlights €200M for Spain to bring super fast internet speeds to rural areas
The medieval village of Banduxo in Asturias. Photo: Guillermo Alvarez/Pixabay

The European Commission has given Spain the green light to use €200 million of the funds allocated to the country through the Next Generation recovery plan to offer internet speeds of up to 300 Mbps (scalable to 1Gb per second) to rural areas with slow internet connections. 

According to Brussels, this measure will help guarantee download speeds of more than 100 Mbps for 100 percent of the Spanish population in 2025.

Around 8 percent of Spain’s population live in areas where speeds above 100Mbs are not available, mostly in the 6,800 countryside villages in Spain that have fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen plans to travel to Madrid on Wednesday June 16th to hand over to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez the approved reform plan for Spain. 

Back in April, Spain outlined its Recovery and Resilience plan aimed at revitalising and modernising the Spanish economy following the coronavirus crisis, with €72 billion in EU grants over the next two years.

This includes green investments in energy transition and housing, boosting science and technology education and digital projects such as the fast-speed internet project which aims to avoid depopulation in rural areas. 

It’s worth noting that these plans set out €4.3 billion for broadband internet and 5G mobile network projects in rural areas in Spain, so this initial investment should be the first of many.

Over the past 50 years, Spain’s countryside has lost 28 percent of its population as Spaniards left to find jobs in the big cities. 

The gap has been widening ever since, local services and connections with the developed cities have worsened, and there are thousands of villages which have either been completely abandoned or are at risk of dying out. 

READ MORE:

How Spaniards are helping to save the country’s 4,200 villages at risk of extinction

rural depopulation spain

The pandemic has seen a considerable number of city dwellers in Spain move or consider a move to the countryside to gain space, peace and quiet and enjoy a less stressful life, especially as the advent of remote working in Spain can allow for this. 

Addressing the issue of poor internet connections is one of the best incentives for digital workers to move to the countryside, bringing with them their families, more business and a new lease of life for Spain’s villages.

READ ALSO:

Nine things you should know before moving to rural Spain

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