Don't want to bring everybody down, but…
I did a bit of research yesterday, and, given that 85% of broadband in Cyprus is provided by CYTA, and given that their average download/upload times are 700/133 kbps (see http://speedtest.net/) I checked out every other country in Europe's speeds (it was a slow day, okay?) and guess what?
Yea! Cyprus has the slowest average speeds of any country in Europe!
The only countries that come close are: Bosnia/Herzogovina, Moldova, and Macedonia. But even they are faster. Even the Faroe Islands has faster speeds.
This made me look again at the lovely CYTA website, where it says:
The customers of CYTANET enjoy the best quality and the fastest access to the Internet in Cyprus. In its eleven (11) years of operation, CYTANET has managed to become the best Internet Service Provider in the Island and the Eastern Mediterranean region, offering a wide range of services to both business and residential users. This success comes from CYTANET's top quality technical infrastructure and from the excellent service that it is committed to offer to its customers.
Isn't that lovely? I wonder what it's like on the planet they live on.
So then I went to look at Wikipedia, where it said this:
On many occasions Cyta has been subpoena to huge amounts of fines by the Commission for the Protection of Competition and by the Commissioner of Electronic Communications and Postal Regulation for antimonopoly practices. Many alleged illegal takeovers have also been investigated recently (ref. secret agreements of CYTA miVision and Lumier TV, investigation is undergoing by the Cyprus Parliament){[2]}. It has been accused and fined on aggressive antimonopoly behaviour against other rival internet service providers, lease intenet lines (Callsat Telecom Vs CYTA invicted by the Commission){[3]}, mobile phone providers, rival phone hotlines and helplines, fined for huge over profits (81 million in 2000) and many more{[4]}.
CYTA was fined and ordered to return (in 2000 81 million and today at least 380 million) to customers (since 2000) but since today has failed to do so. The estimated profit after miVision & LTV takeover yearly 200-300 million skyrocketing the yearly cash flow of the company too 700 million{[5]}.
Also, the General Director has failed to provide access to his company email and its history to commissioner which CYTA is been fined 5000 pounds daily. The commissioner is expected to prosit to a confiscation of the email history{[6]}.
Cyta was one of the first ADSL providers in Europe and became one of the last in services after very poor investments of their huge over profits
I particularly liked the last sentence. So CYTA pay £5,000 CYP every day rather than come out in the open about their activities. That's approximately (well, exactly, actually) £ 1,825,000 CYP a year! I wonder:
a) How they can afford this and…
b) Who's paying for this.
Doh! It's suckers like you and me!
But there is a light at the end of this particularly stinky tunnel, and her name is Viviane Reding. She is the EU Information Society Commissioner and she has made it her goal to bring quality wi-fi to the masses of Europe. Take a look at this link if you'd like to know more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7094188.stm
She clearly has CYTA in her sights:
The commissioner says the market is still dominated by Europe's former state monopolies and considers them as one in a series of bottlenecks obstructing progress towards a single European market.
According to the commission's figures, the big companies have an overall share of 55.6% of the broadband market and the proportion in Cyprus is as high as 89.9%.
So I have decided I love Viviane Reding.
While the bishops are praying for rain, I wonder would they put in a good word for broadband too? It might help them with their connection with the Almighty, and speed up his download of precipitation too.
Lots of love, Kal
To find the average speed in a country you need to know what is the population of the country, how many of them use the internet and at what speed they use it. For example if I was the only person who had internet in Cyprus and I had 10Mbit connection would that mean that average speed of Cyprus is 10Mbit? As the song goes: There is a hole in your logic 
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