10% rise in global average connection speed to 5.0 Mbps: Survey

BENGALURU: Global average connection speed increased 10% to 5.0 Mbps, with South Korea leading the chart at 23.6 Mbps, revealed the First Quarter, 2015, State of the Internet Report by Akamai Technologies, a global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services.

The report provides insight into key global statistics such as connection speeds, broadband adoption across fixed and mobile networks, and IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 implementation.

United Kingdom had the fastest average mobile connection speed at 20.4 Mbps, a 28% quarterly increase and a 1.2% quarterly increase was reported in unique IPv4 addresses to more than 812 million.

"We saw generally positive results across all of the key metrics during the first quarter of 2015,” said David Belson, editor of the report. “The increase in global broadband speeds demonstrates an ongoing commitment to higher standards. While connectivity will continue to differ across many regions, we see the highest broadband speeds in countries/regions with high population densities and strong government backing or support, as well as those that foster competition among Internet providers.”

Quarterly global average connection speeds among the top 10 countries all remained above 10 Mbps, and six of the 10 had average speeds above 15 Mbps, as Ireland (17.4 Mbps), Sweden (15.8 Mbps) and the Netherlands (15.3 Mbps) joined South Korea (23.6 Mbps), Hong Kong (16.7 Mbps) and Japan (15.2 Mbps) in exceeding this benchmark in the first quarter.

Globally, a total of 131 qualifying countries/regions saw average connection speeds increase in the first quarter, with growth rates ranging from 128% in Fiji (6.2 Mbps) to a modest 0.4% in Japan (15.2 Mbps). Year-over-year changes were consistently positive among the top 10, with Ireland (17.4 Mbps), Norway (14.1 Mbps) and Sweden (15.8 Mbps) all posting yearly increases of more than 30%.

In the first quarter, global average peak connection speeds increased 8.2% to 29.1 Mbps. Speeds increased across the board among countries/regions in the top 10, led by Kuwait (76.5 Mbps) and Mongolia (68.9 Mbps) with impressive gains of 126% and 72%, respectively. Singapore (98.5 Mbps) rose 17% to overtake Hong Kong as the country/region with the highest average peak connection speed.

All of the top 10 countries/regions saw average peak speeds greater than 65 Mbps. On a global basis, 124 out of 144 qualifying countries/regions experienced average peak connection speed increases from the fourth quarter, with growth ranging from 0.2% in Puerto Rico (41.2 Mbps) to 126% in Kuwait (76.5 Mbps). Average peak connection speeds in 136 countries/regions increased from the first quarter of 2014.