54 ●
a. High-income countries, 2015
b. Upper- and lower-middleincome countries, 2015
ROU SRB
510
GBR
487
BEL
486
NOR
468
LVA
457
FIN
442
FRA
438
CHE
423
SVK
414
CZE
388
BLR MNE
ESP
145
ALB
33
AZE
32 0.4 127
GEO
70
UKR
56
ARM
45
GRC
84
UZB
0.6
1,6
1,4
1,2
1,0
60
80
International bandwidth per capita (Kbps) High-income countries
Upper-middle-income countries
0
0.8
50
TJK
00 1,8 00
108
00
HRV
00
2
00
KGZ
121
0
129
ITA
0
POL
0
149 145
36
15
PRT CYP
56
10
210
LTU
TUR
MDA
244
SVN
56
TKM
331
HUN
RUS
KAZ
350
IRL
59
0
ISL
81 80
0
740 589
40
EST DEU
124
0
743
35
AUT
170
MKD
0
838
30
1,379
DNK
341
0
SWE
BGR
25
1,630
0
1,634
LUX
20
NLD
0 20 0 40 0
Figure 2.1 ECA countries have a wide variation in international Internet capacity
Reaping Digital Dividends
International bandwidth per capita (Kbps) Lower-middle-income countries
Source: International bandwidth: TeleGeography data; population: World Bank data.
being planned and built. South Europe will soon be connected to America. The 6,600-kilometer Marea cable, owned by Microsoft and Facebook, will connect Virginia Beach in the United States with Bilbao in Spain. Recent years have also seen a burst of new capacity heading south from Europe toward the Middle East and Africa via the Suez Canal, with Marseille in France emerging as a regional hub. In broad geographic terms, the transatlantic focus of connectivity in the 1990s, which persisted into the 2000s, is now evolving into a more diverse, multidirectional model of connectivity heading south and east as well as west. Countries in Central and Eastern Europe rely mostly on terrestrial cables. The Caucasus Cable System, which links Bulgaria with Georgia, is one of the few submarine cables serving the east of the region, and it has already been upgraded three times since it was constructed in 2008. The Europe-Persia Express Gateway is a terrestrial cable linking Europe with the Middle East. Put in place in 2012, it goes from Frankfurt, across Eastern Europe, Russia, Azerbaijan, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Persian Gulf to Barka, in the Sultanate