Where is airport connectivity the best? Ookla weighs in

Wi-Fi is fast, but mobile networks are even faster: Ookla

Airports are notorious for the intensity and density of data usage. Just as summer travel is ramping up, Ookla has reassessed both Wi-Fi and mobile network airport connectivity at more than 50 airports around the world.

So where is airport connectivity the fastest? It depends on whether you are looking at Wi-Fi or cellular networks. For Wi-Fi, U.S. international airports dominated the list. For cellular connectivity, eight of the top 10 airports with the fastest mobile upload speeds were in China.

According to Ookla’s data, nine airports around the world recorded median download speeds on airport Wi-Fi above 100 Mbps, with seven of those in the United States. The top five fastest airport Wi-Fi networks were:

1. San Francisco International Airport (173.55 Mbps median download speeds; also the fastest for Wi-Fi upload speeds)
2. Newark Liberty International Airport at 166.51 Mbps median download speed
3. John F. Kennedy International Airport at 151.59 Mbps
4. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, 151.28 Mbps
5. Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, 137.31 Mbps

Interestingly, Ookla found that at least 15 of the airports Wi-Fi networks tested were using Wi-Fi 6, with a “fairly even split between airports that saw faster download speeds on Wi-Fi 6 and airports where Wi-Fi 6 results were comparable to those on other earlier Wi-Fi generations.”

While the Wi-Fi speeds were impressive, mobile network speeds blew them away. Fourteen airports around the world had faster median download speeds over mobile than the fastest airport Wi-Fi, with the number one airport mobile network clocking in at well over 400 Mbps as a median download speed. Eight of the top 10 fastest airport mobile networks were in China.

The top five airports with the fastest mobile median download speeds were:

1. Hamad International Airport in Doha, Qatar, at 442.49 Mbps median download speed
2. Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport in China at 341.19 Mbps
3. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, 295.94 Mbps
4. Shanghai Pudong International Airport, 264.71 Mbps
5. Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport, 258.42 Mbps

Ookla also put together a handy list comparing the airport Wi-Fi versus the mobile networks at airports around the world. See that and more details from Ookla’s testing here.