Akamai has published its latest state of the internet report, showing expected improvements in internet speeds across the board. While Malaysia has demonstrated some improvements, South Korea recorded an interesting slip in average internet speeds.
Overall, the average global internet speed increased to 7.2Mbps in the first quarter of 2017. A 15 percent jump over the same period last year. The countries with the top ten highest average internet speeds hasn’t changed, save for the Netherlands; who dropped out in favour of the United States of America.
Interestingly, South Korea, with an average internet speed of 28.6Mbps, saw a year-on-year decline of 1.7 percent. This is likely a result of Akamai’s methodology, which relies on IPv4 connections, rather than an actual decrease in internet speeds. It could simply mean a larger portion of internet connection from South Korea have moved on to IPv6.
The rest of the Asia Pacific region showed little change in terms of position relative to one another. All, save for South Korea, showed progress in improving internet speeds. Malaysia itself grew and impressive 40 percent year-on-year. Although the quarterly improvement was a more modest 9.1 percent.
Singapore impressed on a global scale, showing the highest average peak internet connection with 184.5Mbps. This was faster than the usual high speed internet suspects like Japan or South Korea. Coming a distant second was Macao with a peak speed of 132Mbps and then Mongolia with 131.1Mbps.
It’s not surprising to see average internet speeds increase. Akamai’s methods rely on connections coming through its servers, and do not take into account internet penetration when reporting on the health of the internet. Still, it’s nice to have a progress track showing just how much progress has been made.
