Actually it was 2 years from Alaska to Argentina and then 3 years around Africa.
Internet connectivity is MUCH better than you're thinking. 3G and 4G in every town big enough to have a gas station.
The wired internet was so fast in Nairobi and Cape Town I legitimately thought something was wrong. After living in the US, Canada and Australia I've never used internet even half that fast, it was mind bending.
I wonder if that might be because wired is still somewhat of a luxury compared to most that the ISP's aren't held back by the service they offer since there are so few utilizing the bandwidth.
When I went to Cape Town the internet was awful. Super slow (at least for US/EU sites) and with very restrictive data caps (IIRC, 10GB per month). That was circa 2008 so perhaps things are better now
I was mostly joking but 10GB even in 2008 still isn't a lot. 300gb hard drives were pretty common. Although I bet you could've got a lot more out of that 10GB than you can now what with the absurd amount of ads and excessive bloat on websites nowadays.