Bermuda has jumped up the global rankings for broadband speeds, and is now ahead of the United States, Britain, Canada, and all but one of the Caribbean nations.

It has moved to 17th on Cable.co.uk’s annual list after a survey measured the island’s mean average download speed at 73.6 Mbps.

Data from more than 200 countries and jurisdictions was analysed to create the list.

Bermuda was previously 55th with a mean speed of 13.55 Mbps, and in 2018 was 67th with a speed of 9.13 Mbps.

To put Bermuda’s current speed in context, it would allow a 5GB feature film to be downloaded in nine minutes and 17 seconds, whereas the same movie would take 12 minutes to download in Barbados, 15½ minutes in the Isle of Man, and 18 minutes in Britain, according to Cable.co.uk.

Bermuda was one of five countries measured in the North America region and both it and the US, which was listed at No 20, were recognised as having “impressive averages” for speed.

Of the nations surveyed in the Caribbean, only Aruba had a faster average speed than Bermuda.

Dan Howdle, consumer telecoms analyst at Britain’s Cable.co.uk, said: “While global broadband speeds continue to trend upward, the truth is faster countries are the ones lifting the average, pulling away at speed and leaving the slowest to stagnate.

“Last year, we measured the slowest five countries at 125 times slower than the five fastest. This year they are 276 times slower. The slowest countries are not slowing, they are simply not growing. While the fastest countries continue to accelerate year-on-year.”

He added: “Europe absolutely dominates the leaderboard once again thanks to largely excellent infrastructure. In all cases, those countries ranking highest are those with a strong focus on pure fibre (FTTP) networks, with those countries dawdling too much on FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) and ADSL solutions slipping further down year-on-year.”

Cable.co.uk’s internet speed ranking used M-Lab’s broadband measurement data sets, and the information was gathered during the 12 months up to May 7, 2019.

The Bermuda data was derived from 1,204 unique IP addresses, and more than 11,000 tests.

The global listing was topped by Liechtenstein, which had an average mean broadband download speed of 229.98 Mbps.

In a separate survey of 206 countries earlier this year, Cable.co.uk reported that Bermuda was the 17th most expensive place in the world for broadband internet service.

• To find out more about the latest global broadband speed list, visit https://www.cable.co.uk/broadband/speed/worldwide-speed-league/