  Both capacity and latency are crucial performance metrics for the optimal
operation of most networking services and applications, from online gaming to
futuristic holographic-type communications. Networks worldwide have witnessed
important breakthroughs in terms of capacity, including fibre introduction
everywhere, new radio technologies and faster core networks. However, the
impact of these capacity upgrades on end-to-end delay is not straightforward as
traffic has also grown exponentially. This article overviews the current status
of end-to-end latency on different regions and continents worldwide and how far
these are from the theoretical minimum baseline, given by the speed of light
propagation over an optical fibre. We observe that the trend in the last decade
goes toward latency reduction (in spite of the ever-increasing annual traffic
growth), but still there are important differences between countries.

Networking and Internet Architecture