Akamai Technologies, Inc. the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications, today released its Second Quarter, 2014 State of the Internet Report.
The global average connection speed increased 21% from the first to second quarter of the year. At 4.6 Mbps, the global average connection speed exceeded the 4 Mbps "broadband" threshold for the first time.
Eight of the top 10 countries/regions saw double-digit percentage increases from the first to the second quarter of 2014, though South Korea kept its first place average connection speed (24.6 Mbps) with only a 4% quarterly increase. Impressive 18% quarterly growth for Hong Kong (15.7 Mbps) pushed it ahead of Japan, which now matches Switzerland with an average connection speed of 14.9 Mbps. Four of the top 10 countries experienced year-over-year increases of more than 50% in average connection speeds, led by South Korea's 84% annual rise. Yearly increases were seen in 136 qualifying countries/regions, from 197% in Uruguay (5.6 Mbps) to 1.2% in the United Arab Emirates (4.6 Mbps).