According to Akamai Technologies' (NASDAQ:AKAM) "First Quarter, 2017 State of the Internet Report," global average Internet connection speeds have increased 15% year over year, and eight out of 10 qualifying countries/regions saw double-digit annual increases in average connection speed.
The report is based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform and examines broadband adoption, mobile connectivity and other topics concerning the Internet and its usage, as well as trends seen in the data over time.
"Increases in connection speeds and broadband penetration have helped enable the Internet to support levels of traffic that even just a few years ago would have been unimaginable," said David Belson, editor of the report. "One need only look to January's U.S. presidential inauguration, which broke traffic records for live coverage of a single news event delivered by Akamai, largely thanks to the combination of more viewers watching at increasingly higher levels of video quality."
Among the findings:
Global Average and Peak Connection Speeds and Global Broadband Adoption
- Global average connection speed was 7.2 Mbps (an increase of 15% year over year).
- Global average peak connection speed increased 28% year over year to 44.6 Mbps in the first quarter.
- South Korea again had the highest average connection speed globally at 28.6 Mbps in the first quarter.
- Singapore had the highest peak connection speed at 184.5 Mbps in the first quarter.
- Global 4, 10, 15 and 25 Mbps broadband adoption rates increased 13%, 29%, 33% and 42% year over year, respectively.
IPv4 and IPv6
- In the first quarter of 2017, more than 814 million unique IPv4 addresses connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform, which is a 0.7% increase as compared to the first quarter of 2016.
- Belgium remained the global leader in IPv6 adoption with 38% of its connections to Akamai occurring over IPv6 (down 19% from the previous quarter).
Mobile
- Average mobile connection speeds ranged from a high of 26 Mbps in the United Kingdom to a low of 2.8 Mbps in Venezuela.
- Germany had the highest peak mobile connection speed at 200 Mbps in the first quarter.
- Among the qualifying surveyed countries/regions, 37 had an average mobile connection speed at or exceeding the 10 Mbps broadband threshold (up from 30 in the previous quarter), while 70 achieved average speeds at or above the 4 Mbps broadband level (up from 58).