Global Average Connection Speed Increased To 7 Mbps In Q4 2016
Akamai Technologies, a content delivery network services (CDN) provider, on March 8, 2017 released its Q4 “2016 State of the Internet Report” that provides insight into key global statistics such as connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, IPv4 exhaustion, IPv6 implementation, notable Internet disruptions, among others.
According to the report, global average internet connection speed has increased 12 percent to 7.0 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2016 — a 26 percent increase year-over-year. The quarterly report includes data collected from across the Akamai Intelligent Platform about attack traffic, broadband adoption, mobile connectivity and other relevant topics regarding the internet and its usage, as well as trends 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,” David Belson, editor of the State of the Internet Report, comments.
“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 percent globally. We’re now seeing a 15 Mbps adoption rate of 25 percent 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,” he added.
Once again, South Korea had the highest average connection speed globally at 26.1 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2016. At 26.7 Mbps, the District of Columbia led the United States in average connection speed. The U.S was ranked 14th globally with a fourth quarter average connection speed of 17.2 Mbps, for a 21 percent year-over-year gain. Further, the average Internet connection speed in India was 5.6Mbps, a rise of 36 percent quarter-on-quarter, and a whopping 99 percent year-on-year. This statistic gives it the country a global rank of 97.
The report talked about how global 4, 10, 15 and 25 Mbps broadband adoption rates increased 15 percent, 31 percent, 37 percent and 45 percent year over year, respectively.
The report also says that nearly 807 million unique IPv4 addresses connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform in Q4 2016, which is a 0.4 percent decrease as compared to the same period in 2015. There was also significantly less IPv4 allocation/assignment activity in the fourth quarter, with 6.4 million addresses allocated/assigned versus 16 million in the third quarter, Akamai says.
