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If you're reading this on your phone, pray you're in Singapore

LTE speed data from 15 million phones puts New Zealand ahead of USA, UK and Australia

If you're reading this on your phone, pray you're in Singapore, New Zealand, Hungary or Israel, because they're the four nations where LTE networks deliver the fastest downloads. Clasp your hands and look heavenwards again if you live in the United Kingdom or United States , as those nations come in 29th and 55th respectively in Open Signal's State of LTE report for 2015's fourth quarter.

Open Signal collects its data by asking consumers to install an app on their iOS or Android devices, then collecting download speed data and shoving it all through an analytic-o-tron it describes sketchily here. The result is a study that puts Singapore's SingTel out front as the world's speediest LTE provider, at a handy 40Mbps across 86 per cent of the city state's surface area.

Other carriers drag Singapore's average download speed down to 37Mbps, but the Lion City is still streets ahead of second-placed New Zealand with an average of 29Mbps.

Australia slips into 8th position with 24Mbps, while the UK's 29th place comes from a 15Mbps average and leaves Blighty behind Oman, Latvia, Ecuador, Slovenia, Morocco and Columbia. Good thing BT's buying EE then, isn't it?

The firm feels the nations where things are speeding up score well because local carriers have either switched on LTE-advanced, or are using more spectrum, or both. “ A year ago, an average 4G speed of 20 Mbps would have been a truly impressive feat, but today there are 15 countries and 52 individual networks that meet or exceed that mark,” the firm notes.

Punters play a part too, by moving to newer and more capable handsets. Which may explain Singapore's position at the top of the charts: residents of the island nation love to shop (helped by low personal tax rates).

And the USA's slump? The firm has no explanation, other than to suggest that local carriers just aren't making the right investments. New Zealand's strong performance on speed can perhaps be explained by the 54 per cent LTE coverage, suggesting local carriers are doing well in the nation's small-ish cities. ®

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