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Comment by kristopher | Hacker News Reader

HOW SPEEDS COMPARE doesn't really mean much. Japan has a higher density of users per square kilometer, so it seems to me that there should be some sort of normalization done to the numbers. I get better speeds in Kyoto (less simultaneous users) than I do in Shibuya (many simultaneous users!)

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Thanks for the feedback. We aim to measure the actual user experience on LTE, rather than the theoretical capacity. If an area has a higher density of users then of course connections will be slower, but that is meant to be a part of what we're recording. Obviously countrywide averages are never going to say very much about localised area speeds, but they do give a general indication for the purpose of international comparison.

But on the other hand, higher density of users mean a large opportunity to use wifi offloading to complement the capacity. This of course depends on exactly where you measure and what exactly you are measuring due to short range of wifi (and on the capabilities of your measure equipment).

Also, how are you measuring speed? HTTP Download? Where are your servers located?

Sorry we missed this one, yep HTTP download from Cloudfront - so we use those servers. Others e.g. SpeedTest.net use the servers of the local ISPs which is better for measuring the max possible speed a user can get, but our focus is on the speeds users are more likely to get while actually browsing/downloading so Cloudfront works pretty well as a lot of global traffic is served through it - would love to see the % if anyone knows.

If density mattered, Hong Kong wouldn't have such good speeds.

That is because there are a lot more people using 4G in Japan then HK. Which only recently rolled out.

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