South Korea Has Fastest Net Speeds, But Sweden Is Gaining: Akamai
The average global connection speed was 5.1Mbps in Q3 2015, notes Akamai's State of the Internet report for that quarter. That's a 14 percent year-over-year improvement. South Korea once again led the way with the fastest average, at 20.5Mbps. That shows a decrease of 19 percent year-over-year. South Korea better watch out, because Sweden is gaining on it with a 17.4Mbps average. The next fastest countries were Norway, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. The United States ranked 16th, with an average speed of 12.6Mbps. It ranked 20th back in Q2.
Akamai found that 15 percent of unique IP addresses around the world connected to it with average speeds of 15Mbps or better, considered the threshold for 4K video. That's up 1 percent since Q2. South Korea leads in 15Mbps connectivity, with 45 percent above that level.
In the United State, the District of Columbia again enjoyed the fastest average speeds, at 19.5Mbps. It was followed by Delaware, Utah, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Washington, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and New York. Of the top ten, Delaware and Utah showed the most improvement. Alaska again had the lowest average, at 8.5Mbps. Akamai notes that this might change soon, as a partnership between Alcatel-Lucent and Quintillion Subsea Holdings on an undersea cable should bring high-speed connectivity to northern Alaska in 2016.
Akamai currently only tracks IPv4 connections to its servers for this report, but notes that it might start publishing 1Pv6 data as early as Q1 2016.
Full data is available on Akamai's State of the Internet website.
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