Greece has the slowest fixed internet in Europe, according to the annual report on the digital quality of life, compiled by cyber security company Surfshark.
The report says that internet services remain among the most expensive in relation to people’s incomes.
The Dutch firm was set up in 2018, and its 2022 Digital Quality of Life Index is led by Israel, followed by Denmark, Germany, France, and Sweden while Congo, Yemen, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Cameroon are at the bottom of the rankings.
Greece has dropped one place from 2021, ranking 39th among 117 countries worldwide and is also 29th among 38 European countries surveyed.
The company says its survey covers ninety-two percent of the global population, analyzing internet affordability and quality, the electronic infrastructure, electronic government, and electronic security.
Surfshark studied the 117 countries according to five different pillars prior to giving them an overall ranking for its Digital Quality of Life Index. Countries were ranked based on internet affordability, internet quality, e-infrastructure, e-security, and e-government.
Internet is expensive in Greece
The report shows that an internet user in Greece needs to work every month for about twelve minutes to buy 1 GB of data for his mobile phone, six times more than what is needed in Bulgaria and 149 times more than what is needed in Israel, the country with the lowest fees which also tops this year’s index.
Breaking down each criterion, the financial ability to pay for internet services essentially measures whether the charges are cheap for the income of the nation’s citizens.
Greece’s ranking is 67th down from 61st last year. This is because, this year, in order to buy 1 GB of mobile data, users in Greece will have to work six seconds longer compared to last year.
Fixed internet connection fees are also high. In order to pay for the cheapest connection, Greeks have to work three hours and forty-six minutes each month—twelve times more than households in Israel, where it is enough to work nineteen minutes a month.
Low performance on internet speed
On internet quality which mainly measures speed, Greece is ranked 55th among 117 countries, with the low performance mainly related to the speed of fixed internet connections.
Regarding mobile internet speed, Greece ranks 20th, with a speed of 97.5 Mbps/second. In contrast, the internet speeds at home are an average of 40.4 Mbps/second, which puts Greece in 84th place. According to Surfshark, fixed internet speed in Greece is two times lower than in Bulgaria while mobile internet speed is thirty-six percent lower.
Greece may improve after Hellas Sat announced earlier in the year the launch of a series of new satellites featuring cutting-edge technology that may increase the country’s internet speeds.
Top spot for internet security
In internet security, Greece maintains first place, as in last year’s ranking, something particularly important for users, individuals, and businesses but also for the functioning of the public administration.
In e-governance, the country ranks 55th this year whereas it ranked 59th last year. The improvement is due to the readiness of the state and businesses to use artificial intelligence. In terms of this sub-criterion, Greece moved up ten places and ranks 48th from 58th in last year’s report.
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