Akamai State of Internet Report Finds Steady Improvements Globally

The global average connection speed is up 23% YOY to 5.6Mbps at the end of 4Q, according to Akamai’s 4Q State of the Internet Report released Tuesday. Meanwhile, the number of unique, worldwide IPv4 addresses connecting to Akamai had a slight increase of 0.2% to just over 810 million addresses. On a global basis, close to 70% of the countries/regions saw a quarter-over-quarter increase in unique IPv4 address counts in 4Q, up 10% from 3Q.

Across 4Q, Akamai saw “moderate, positive connectivity growth” through most of the Americas region. The U.S. had the highest average connection speed at 14.2 Mbps, while Venezuela and Paraguay had the lowest, both at 1.6 Mbps. The U.S. had the highest peak connection speed at 61.5 Mbps, more than 4 Mbps greater than 2nd place Uruguay. Venezuela had the lowest peak connection speed at 11.3 Mbps. In the U.S., 10 states had 14% or more of unique IP addresses connected to Akamai at average speeds of at least 25 Mbps, with D.C. holding the top spot at 25% adoption, a 15% quarter-over-quarter growth.

Globally, each of the top 10 countries/regions in order of greatest 10 Mbps adoption saw double-digit growth in 25 Mbps broadband adoption except for Hong Kong, which posted a 9.8% change quarter-over-quarter. Norway and Denmark saw the greatest yearly gains at 165% and 188%, respectively. South Korea had the top average connection speed at 26.7 Mbps, posting a 20% increase over 4Q, 2014. And South Korea and Macao (83.1 Mbps) were the only country/regions to post double-digit quarterly gains in average peak connection speed at 10% and 13%, respectively. Some 19% of unique global IP addresses connected to Akamai at average “4K-ready” connection speeds of 15 Mbps or above, up from 15% in 3Q. Year-over-year, the global 15 Mbps adoption rate grew 54% with nine of the top 10 countries/regions seeing gains ranging from 3.3% in South Korea (63% adoption) to 102% in Norway (45% adoption).

In terms of IPv4 and IPv6 adoption, 43 countries/regions saw IPv4 address counts grow 10% or more, while 13 saw counts decline 10% or more as compared with the previous quarter. Belgium again maintained a clear lead, with 37% of content requests being made over IPv6, up from 35% in 3Q. France (11%) posted the largest quarter-over-quarter gain with 113%. Verizon Wireless (67%) and Belgium’s Telenet (53%) continued to lead as the two network providers with more than half of their requests to Akamai made over IPv6. Similar to last quarter, nine of the top 20 providers had at least one in four content requests to Akamai via IPv6. However, 18 of the top 20–down from 20 in the previous quarter–had at least 10% of their requests to Akamai occur over IPv6.