Hong Kong has overtaken South Korea to claim the fastest broadband speeds worldwide for both mobile and fixed connections.
According to Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report, Hong Kong’s average peak connection speed reached 49.2 Mbps in the first quarter of 2012, pushing long-time leader South Korea into second place at 47.8 Mbps.
These two territories led the global rankings, followed by Japan (39.5 Mbps), Romania (38.8 Mbps) and Latvia (33.5 Mbps) to complete the top five for peak speeds.
When looking at average measured connection speed rather than peak, South Korea remained in the lead with 15.7 Mbps. Japan (10.9 Mbps) and Hong Kong (9.3 Mbps) ranked second and third respectively.
By contrast, the United Kingdom performed relatively poorly, placing 22nd for peak speed and 21st for measured speed, with a peak average of 23.7 Mbps and a measured average of 5.6 Mbps.
The United States ranked eighth for peak speed at 28.7 Mbps and twelfth for measured connection speed at 6.7 Mbps.
Australia experienced the largest decline among the surveyed countries, suffering a 49% drop in peak speed compared with the fourth quarter of 2011. Akamai attributed this decline primarily to problems affecting a single major network provider in the country.
The report highlighted continued long-term progress, noting a broad shift toward higher-speed connectivity: 125 countries showed year-on-year growth in average broadband connection speed.
Additionally, seven more countries exceeded an average connection speed of 1 Mbps during this quarter, reducing the number of countries averaging below 1 Mbps from 31 last year to 24.
Akamai also reported a 6% global increase in the number of unique IP addresses observed since the fourth quarter of 2011, reflecting broader internet adoption and network growth.
For mobile connections, average broadband speeds reported in the study ranged widely, from around 6.0 Mbps at the high end to roughly 322 kbps at the low end.
These results point to clear global momentum toward faster broadband, though regional differences and individual network issues continue to shape national rankings. What do you expect the next quarter’s figures will show?