According to Akamai Technologies' (NASDAQ:AKAM) "Fourth Quarter, 2016, State of the Internet Report," global average Internet speed is up 26% year over year, and all key global broadband adoption metrics saw double-digit gains year over year.
Based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform, the report tracks global Internet statistics such as connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, disruptions, IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 implementation. It also tracks trends in the Internet and its usage over time.
"Internet connection speeds continued to show positive long-term trends around the world, with particularly strong year-over-year increases across all broadband adoption metrics," said David Belson, editor of the report. "When Akamai first published the report in 2008, we defined 'high broadband' as 5 Mbps and above, which nine years ago had an adoption rate of 16% globally. We're now seeing a 15 Mbps adoption rate of 25% worldwide. The upward trends are encouraging as businesses create and deliver even richer experiences for bigger audiences across the Internet, but accentuate the need for organizations to optimize those experiences for the myriad connected devices their customers are using."
Among the findings:
Global Average Connection Speeds and Global Broadband Adoption
- Global average connection speed increased 12% to 7.0 Mbps in the fourth quarter, a 26% increase year over year.
- South Korea again had the highest average connection speed globally at 26.1 Mbps in the fourth quarter.
- At 26.7 Mbps, the District of Columbia led the United States in average connection speed.
- Global 4, 10, 15 and 25 Mbps broadband adoption rates increased 15%, 31%, 37% and 45% year over year, respectively.
IPv4 and IPv6
- In the fourth quarter of 2016, nearly 807 million unique IPv4 addresses connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform, a 0.4% decrease as compared to the fourth quarter of 2015.
- There was significantly less IPv4 allocation/assignment activity in the fourth quarter, with 6.4 million addresses allocated/assigned vs. 16 million in the third quarter.
- With 47% percent of its content requests to Akamai coming over IPv6, Belgium maintained its global lead in IPv6 adoption with a 20% quarter-over-quarter increase.
Mobile
- Average mobile connection speeds ranged from a high of 26.8 Mbps in the United Kingdom to a low of 2.9 Mbps in Venezuela.
- Among the qualifying surveyed countries/regions, 30 had an average mobile connection speed at or exceeding the 10 Mbps broadband threshold (up from 24 in the previous quarter), while 58 achieved average speeds at or above the 4 Mbps broadband level (up from 52).