Global Average Internet Speeds Grow To 4.5 Mbps

According to the latest numbers, average connection speeds rose twenty percent around the globe in 2014. It's kind of odd that no numbers were given for the U.S. though.

The cloud service provider, which publishes its internet report quarterly, found that average connection speeds saw an annual increase in 132 countries, although the size of the increases varied. For instance, while Morocco saw its connection speed increase 0.3 percent to 2.4 Mbps, speeds in Congo rose 146 percent to 1.3 Mbps.

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It looks like we're kinda faster than third world countries still, but getting close.

Kinda faster? The US has the fastest average connection speeds in the Americas. 11.1 MB (as of the last full Akamai report) Canada at #2 with 10.7MB all other countries in the Americas coming in at 5.9 or less. Some much less like Bolivia's 1.2 and Venezuela's 1.4.

We only fall behind Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea compared to the Asia Pacific region Well ahead of New Zealand and Australia.

In Europe, Middle East and Africa, Czech Repulic (12.3), Finland(12.1), Denmark(11.9), Netherlands(14.2), Norway(11.4), Romania11.6), Sweden(14.6) and Switzerland(14.5) have faster average speeds. The US beats out Austria (9.8), Germany (8.8) France (7.1), the UK (10.9) and most other countries.

3rd world countries aren't even close.

Why does Hong Kong count as a separate country? It's not. It's part of China now.

HK has its own iso code and its own dialing code, clearly a county.

Also yay, I'm above average!

flashoverride said:

Why does Hong Kong count as a separate country? It's not. It's part of China now.

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Hong Kong is still covered under the one country two systems rules I think ... because of that they tend to be treated as a separate entity for anything that doesn't threaten the definition of Chinese sovereignty over them ... internet speeds fall into that category I would think since they have different firewall impact than internet stuff on the mainland

kbrickley said:

Hong Kong is still covered under the one country two systems rules I think ... because of that they tend to be treated as a separate entity for anything that doesn't threaten the definition of Chinese sovereignty over them ... internet speeds fall into that category I would think since they have different firewall impact than internet stuff on the mainland

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Eh, that kinda makes sense. Was reading through the SAR on Wiki. Wonder where Macau falls. Also, HK is 426 Sq. Miles... yeah. Smaller than New York City.

lies, damned lies, and statistics

griffinhart said:

Kinda faster? The US has the fastest average connection speeds in the Americas. 11.1 MB (as of the last full Akamai report) Canada at #2 with 10.7MB all other countries in the Americas coming in at 5.9 or less. Some much less like Bolivia's 1.2 and Venezuela's 1.4.

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Be careful there with the conclusions, this little tidbit of information in the introduction was interesting.

In January, the US Federal Communications Commission redefined the qualification for broadband from 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up to 25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up. As a result, Akamai said it will reconsider how it formulates the report going forward.

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So it seems that due to the way the US defines broadband, if you don't have 4/1 services then you're not even counted in this study, since we're talking broadband speeds not internet speeds. So all those DSL users that are 3/768k are not included, any of those people still rocking the dialup modem, anyone who's on satellite internet. So with something like Comcast, 5Mbps users and there's a huge jump between that and the 25Mbps crowd, except for some higher tiers in Uverse (6Mbps and up) there's not really a lot of inbetween values. So the fact the US is scoring "high" at 11Mbps, makes me think there are at least 2 - 5Mbps cable users for every 1 - 25Mbps user, and if you throw in 50 and 100+ Mbps tiers that Cable does have, many more 5Mbps users are thrown in.. So a the small percentage of those "power users" are bringing the average up but doesn't reflect what the average person has.

The new definition of broadband by the FCC was silly, and I said it then. There are only a handful of countries (all Asian) that average that speed or more. And yes there are a lot of 5MB users out there. My neighbor is one of them. By choice. We both have Fios, they just opted for the cheapest connection since they just surf the web and do email. Nothing else.

i worked feom home no problem on 1.3/192k
sure uploads were a bitcj if the project was large but other wise it worked quite well. glad i got upgraded though to 24/2 cause at least ow i can watch videos and stuff.

griffinhart said:

Kinda faster? The US has the fastest average connection speeds in the Americas. 11.1 MB (as of the last full Akamai report) Canada at #2 with 10.7MB all other countries in the Americas coming in at 5.9 or less. Some much less like Bolivia's 1.2 and Venezuela's 1.4.

We only fall behind Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea compared to the Asia Pacific region Well ahead of New Zealand and Australia.

In Europe, Middle East and Africa, Czech Repulic (12.3), Finland(12.1), Denmark(11.9), Netherlands(14.2), Norway(11.4), Romania11.6), Sweden(14.6) and Switzerland(14.5) have faster average speeds. The US beats out Austria (9.8), Germany (8.8) France (7.1), the UK (10.9) and most other countries.

3rd world countries aren't even close.

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I can only go by the services offered in the areas I've lived in, the current on is covered by slow Frontier DSL and expensive Comcast cable. Until last year I had to settle for 3mbps, a little better than Morocco's average of 2.4mpbs.

Faster speeds mean nothing if the price is ridiculous, I can imagine Comcast's 500mbps service for couple hundred bucks is a nice way to skew data without adding anything meaningful to the discussion. But on the ground people know they're getting shafted.