Analytics, Baltic, EU – Baltic States, Internet, Rating, Technology

Lithuania scored 0.6553 points on the scale between 0 and 1.  

Estonia is ranked 28th with 0.6431 points and Latvia is at number 39 with 0.5791 points. 

Goddy Ray, the DQL research lead at Surfshark, says Lithuania and Estonia are among the surprises of the study"

"An interesting finding is that Lithuania, together with Estonia, is among only a few countries which we can call 'the surprises’ of the DQL index," Ray told BNS in a comment. "This means that Lithuania has a surprisingly good digital quality of life in terms of country's GDP per capita".

"Global tendency is that GDP per capita correlates with the digital quality of life. However, Lithuania with a few other countries can offer higher digital quality of life to its citizens than its GDP numbers would suggest," he said.  

Lithuania placed fourth in terms of cybersecurity and 19th in broadband internet speed. It lagged behind the leaders in terms of mobile Internet speed at number 33 and E-government availability in 38th position.   

In Lithuania, one has to work 72 minutes to afford the cheapest broadband package and 477 seconds to afford the cheapest mobile Internet.

Australia tops the overall index with 0.7992 points, followed closely by France with 0.7985 points and Singapore with 0.7854 points.

The countries with the lowest DQL indexes are Iraq with 0.2915 points, Ethiopia with 0.2328 points and Algeria with 0.1865 points.

The research team at Surfshark, a virtual private network service based in the British Virgin Islands, ranked countries by the speed of Internet connectivity and its affordability as well as cybersecurity, the availability of data protection laws, e-government services and other criteria.

According to the DQL study, well-developed Internet infrastructure does not necessarily ensure a high quality of digital life for citizens as other factors such as the country's cyber security or personal data protection laws have a major impact on digital well-being.