U.S. broadband connection speeds now average better than 7.4 Mbps, Akamai today said in its Q4 State of the Internet Report, that’s more than 25 percent faster than average connection speeds nationwide were a year ago, but still leaves the United States eighth in the global rankings behind South Korea (14 Mbps), Japan (10.8 Mbps), Hong Kong (9.3 Mbps), Latvia (8.9 Mbps), Switzerland (8.7 Mbps), Netherlands (8.6 Mbps), and the Czech Republic (8.1 Mbps).
The U.S. saw one of the highest speed bumps in the world’s Top 10, at 28 percent with only Sweden’s speed increasing at a faster rate (29 percent).
The global average came in at 2.9 Mbps, up 25 percent from a year ago, with only 18 countries/regions having average connection speeds of 1 Mbps or less (The worst? Libya at 0.6 Mbps).
Peak connection speeds—the average of the maximum measured connection speeds across all of the unique IP addresses seen by Akamai from a particular geography–also increased. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, peak connection speeds increased 4.6 percent, to 16.6 Mbps, with all of the top 10 countries/regions, and the U.S., showing increases.
Peak connection speeds in the U.S. averaged 31.5 Mbps, a 25 percent increase. Global peak connection speeds increased 35 percent.
In the U.S., top connection speeds were in Vermont at 10.8 Mbps followed by Delaware (10.6 Mbps), Washington, D.C. (10.2 Mbps) and New Hampshire (10.1 Mbps). Utah, Maryland, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey all had connection speeds above 9 Mbps. Arkansas, at 3.8 Mbps, showed the worst average connection speeds.
Not surprisingly, Kansas (thank you, Google Fiber) showed a huge 86 percent increase in its year-over-year connection speeds. Google last year began deploying its 1 Gbps broadband in and around Kansas City (and has since announced a planned deployment in Austin and its purchase of iProvo, a municipal fiber project in Utah that will be its next 1 Gbps business).
