More and more people in the world are connecting to the internet via their cell phones, but the experience could not be more different if one lives in Costa Rica or Uruguay.
Uruguay has the highest connection speed in Latin America: 10.21 megabits per second, according to the latest measurement by the British company Open Signal. While Costa Rica is located at the other end of the spectrum, with a speed of just 2.55 Mbps.
Complete ranking:
Average connection speed via cell phone
Country / Connection speed
Uruguay 10.21 Mbps
Peru 9.11 Mbps
Chile 8.77 Mbps
Colombia 8.07 Mbps
Mexico 7.93 Mbps
Guatemala 7.66 Mbps
Brazil 7.43 Mbps
Ecuador 6.63 Mbps
Paraguay 6.63 Mbps
Argentina 6.52 Mbps
Panama 6.15 Mbps
Bolivia 5.33 Mbps
EL Salvador 4.42 Mbps
Venezuela 3.88 Mbps
Costa Rica 2.55 Mbps
According to the study, for which 95 countries were analyzed, the world average speed in browsing is 8.5 Mbps. But as can be seen in the table above, in Latin America only Chile, Peru and Uruguay are above said average. While Costa Rica is accompanied in the list of the slowest by Venezuela and El Salvador. These three are, in fact, the only ones of the Latin American countries studied that have connections of less than 5 Mbps. Although the Open Signal measurement did not include Honduras, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti.
For its study, Open Dignal -specialized in wireless mobile coverage mapping- took into account the activity of more than 800,000 devices that had the Open Signal application installed, available for Android and iOS. And it found that when it comes to speed, no one beats South Korean phones, averaging 43.34 Mbps. (Megabits per second are used to measure the speed at which information moves from one place to another). And in the case of a cell phone, the minimum quality required for data transfer is 0.032 Mbps.
Wifi vs. 3G
The study also determined that the most used form of connection by most smartphone users around the world is Wi-Fi. And in the Latin American case, this is particularly true in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay, Colombia and Ecuador. In these countries, more than half of the connection time via cell phone corresponds to the wireless network rather than to data services. The practice, however, is much less common in Bolivia, Guatemala, and Paraguay.
Average connection time via Wifi
Country / Average time
Argentina 61%
Brazil 59%
Venezuela 55%
Uruguay 55%
Mexico 54%
Colombia 53%
Ecuador 52%
Panama 50%
Chile 50 %
Peru 44%
Costa Rica 43%
El Salvador 42%
Paraguay 40%
Guatemala 39%
Bolivia 32%
All, despite the fact that the average availability of 3G or higher networks in Latin America is, on average, quite good. Perhaps because although 3G is considered the minimum standard for the connection of smartphones, its availability does not guarantee speed.
3G or higher networks availability
Country / Average availability time
Chile 91.21%
Costa Rica 90.54%
Peru 90.41%
Uruguay 88.73%
Bolivia 86.96%
Guatemala 86.34%
Paraguay 85.88%
Argentina 84.74%
Colombia 84.64%
Mexico 84.35%
El Salvador 83.62%
Ecuador 81.02%
