According to a report by Akamai, worldwide broadband average speed was at 5.1 Mbps and at over 4 Mbps in about 65% connections. The report show a 14% increase in broadband speed over the previous year.
Despite this notable increases in average broadband speed worldwide, Akamai reported a decline of 19% in connection speed compared to last year and an 11percent decline in the second quarter.
South Korea ranks the highest on the list of countries with the fastest broadband with average speeds of 20.5 Mbps, Norway’s broadband speed increased by about 44% while Sweden and Finland recorded a 26% and 23% increase respectively. Countries such as Hong Kong, Norway, Japan, Latvia, Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, Czech Republic and Finland are among those with the fastest broadband connections.
However, countries such as Syria and Azerbaijan experienced a decline, with broadband speed falling to as low as 1.2 Mbps and 3.2 Mbps for each country. It must be stated that nations with faster connections have contributed, however small to the number of connections with speeds of 15 Mbps or higher (4k ready) globally. According to Akamai, about only 15% connections made worldwide were higher than 15 Mbps.
Improved broadband speeds have also been noted in the US with about 44 out of 51 states experiencing connection speeds higher than 10 Mbps over the last year.
The highest gain in broadband speed was recorded in the District of Columbia with an average speed of 19.5 Mbps. That district experienced a 34 percent increase in connection speed. States like Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, New York, Delaware, Washington, Utah, and Virginia had average speed of over 14.8 Mbps. An undersea cable has been planned for the state of Alaska by 2016 in order to improve its broadband speed. The state had the lowest speed rate of 8.5 Mbps in the state.
This Akamai report is based on a survey of 108 countries. Of these nations, 56 nations could only boast of speeds about 4 Mbps. Connection speed improved by 9.8 percent globally as over 65 percent of the connections made recorded speeds over 4 Mbps. But this wasn’t the case with Egypt where connection speed was at 4 Mbps for just 1.3 percent of the connections made in that country, this is quite low. In Venezuela also, the rate of broadband adoption stood at 2.1 percent.
Based on the findings of this report, more needs to be done to make broadband connection accessible and affordable globally in line with the United Nation’s five-year broadband objective set in 2010. A look on the bright side, we hope that projects by mega companies like Google project Loon and Facebook’s plans to make broadband connection available with the aid of drones will become a reality. These efforts could assist in making broadband connections accessible and affordable to all.
Source: Akamai State of The Internet
