South Korea is the leader in hotel Wi-Fi quality, significantly ahead of runner-up Japan, according to a study by Hotel WiFi Test.
The company said in a report that South Korea's Wi-Fi quality at 92% is 7.1 percentage points ahead of Japan. The United States ranks at only 40th out of the 50 “most-tested” countries, at barely 35.9%.
This report focuses on the geographical aspects of hotel Wi-Fi, based on the quality of the WiFi and whether in-room WiFi is free.
Quality is expressed by the percentage of hotels that offer adequate Wi-Fi quality in a given geographical area. In the study, a hotel judged as having adequate Wi-Fi must provide an expected download speed of at least 3 Mbps (the Netflix recommendation for SD-quality streaming) and an upload speed of 500 kbps (the Skype recommendation for high-quality non-HD video calling).
The “Free WiFi” percentage is calculated as a ratio of hotels that offer in-room Wi-Fi for free to all hotels for which the Wi-Fi price structure and availability is known.
Of the 50 countries, Vietnam is best with free in-room Wi-Fi with 95.8% and 50th rank (20.7% quality) Cambodia is second with 95%.
Among regions, it is 33% more likely that a hotel in Europe has adequate WiFi than in the US. However, it is 14% more likely that a US hotel will offer free in-room Wi-Fi.
Asia is at the top when it comes to hotel Wi-Fi quality (49.5%), but at the bottom for the percentage of hotels offering free in-room Wi-Fi (61.2%).
As for world cities, Stockholm bests 49 others with 88.9% quality and 89.5% chance that in-room Wi-Fi is free.
In this list, Asian cities that made it were Tokyo (3rd), Hong Kong (10th), Singapore (12th), Bangalore (16th), Bangkok (22nd), Kuala Lumpur (24th), Pattaya in Thailand (45th), and Jakarta (47th).