Internet Connections: how fast are they in Italy? Situation and outlook
How fast is internet connection in Italy? According to research carried out by the content delivery platform Akamai, in the first trimester of 2017 Italy climbed 13 percentage points compared to the previous year, reaching 61st place in the global classification of internet connection speeds.
Despite this improvement, it is a result which brings little satisfaction if we consider that the average web connection speed was 9.2 Mbps in Italy at the beginning of last year, while in most other European countries (27 out of 31 to be precise) it reached or exceeded 10 Mbps.
According to the same study, five EU nations were ranked in the top ten, thanks to their use of broad band with 25 Mbps. The (northern) European countries in question are:
- Norway (second place);
- Sweden (third place);
- Switzerland (fifth place);
- Denmark (sixth place);
- Finland (ninth place).
As regards Italy, 79% of connections exceed 4 Mbps, 26% exceed 10 Mbps and only 12% exceed 15 Mbps. Mobile connections are also considerably slower in Italy with an average speed of 12.4 Mbps (compared to corresponding figures of 26 Mbps in the UK and 24.1 Mbps in Germany).
Consequently, Italy has implemented some measures to boost Internet infrastructures and ensure better connection speeds. This move is aimed at satisfying the EU request to reach a target of 80% coverage at 100 Mbps by 2020.
According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index study, by the year 2021, Italy’s web traffic will grow by 400 percentage points. This is expected to be accompanied by an increase in the number of single users as well as improved connection speed.
Average connection speed is forecast to reach 24.3 Mbps, which will also allow a significant increase in video traffic (+82% -this rise will be made possible by the increase in the speed of data transmission).
Considering that people will continue to use the internet more and more, Italy is taking various steps and making numerous investments in order to narrow the gap with other European Union nations.
However, efforts in this area will need to be consistent, because while most industrialised nations are already contemplating ultra-wide band, in excess of 30 Mbps, some areas of Italy do not yet have ADSL.
Furthermore, although providers promise high speed connections, in most cases they do not deliver on these promises (an example in point is fibre optics, which provide a connection which is usually high-speed only as far as the road-side junction boxes where its cables end).
The average speed is also affected by factors such as the distance from the provider’s central servers or the actual quantity of net traffic, but there are various instruments and ad hoc technologies which can measure it while guaranteeing a high level of accuracy.
Among the most important of these are the two systems created by AGCOM (an Italian Agency which is the guarantor of communications, Misurainternet Speed Test (website) and Ne.Me.Sys (software which can be used for legal purposes to ascertain the performance of a line).
While the former is quick and easy to use, the second is a program which requires installation on the computer and analyses connection speed over two consecutive days in order to provide reliable results.
This is the current situation in Italy regarding web connection: a situation which needs improvement if Italy is to catch up with results achieved in the Nordic countries.
Translated by Joanne Beckwith
