Across the planet, broadband is getting faster & faster

Akamai’s latest State of the Internet Report finds:

• A 6 percent increase globally from the fourth quarter of 2011 in the number of unique IP addresses connecting to Akamai, growing to over 666 million.
• The global average connection speed was 2.6 Mbps
• The global average peak connection speed increased to 13.5 Mbps.
• South Korea had the highest average connection speed at 15.7 Mbps, while Hong Kong had the highest average peak connection speed, at 49.3 Mbps.
• In the first quarter of 2012, average connection speeds on known mobile providers ranged from 6.0 Mbps down to 322 kbps.
• Average mobile peak connection speeds during the quarter ranged from 32.2 Mbps down to 2.2 Mbps.
• Mobile data traffic almost doubled from the first quarter of 2011 to the first quarter of 2012 and was up 19 percent quarter-over-quarter.
• In the first quarter, Hong Kong took the top spot for average peak connection speed (49.3 Mbps), dropping South Korea (47.8) to second place. The remaining top 5 included Japan (39.5 Mbps), Romania (38.8 Mbps) and Latvia (33.5 Mbps).
• Globally, high broadband (10 Mbps or higher) adoption increased 19 percent to 10 percent in the first quarter, and South Korea had the highest level of high broadband adoption, at 53 percent.
• Global broadband (4 Mbps or higher) adoption grew 10 percent to 40 percent, with South Korea having the highest level of broadband adoption, at 86 percent.
• Nine of the top 10 countries saw high broadband adoption levels increase quarter-over-quarter, ranging from a 7.6 percent increase in Hong Kong (to 28 percent) to a surprisingly large 63 percent jump in Denmark (to 15 percent). Overall, 42 qualifying countries saw quarterly growth in high broadband adoption, from a massive 149 percent increase in South Africa (to 0.7 percent) to a 3.4 percent increase in Ireland (to 10 percent).
• Nearly 60 percent of US connections are above 4 Mbps while 15 percent of US connections are about 10 Mbps.