CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—Internet connectivity speeds were on the rise the whole world over according to Akamai’s “Fourth Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report.” Using data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform, the report displayed findings on connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 implementation, and notable disruptions and events.
Among the key findings in the report was a 12 percent increase in the global average connection speed to 7 Mbps, a 26 percent increase year-over-year. It was also noted the broadband adoption of Global 4, 10, 15 and 25 Mbps increased by 15 percent, 31 percent, 37 percent and 45 percent year-over-year, respectively. Additional findings found that South Korea had the highest average connection speed at 26.1 Mbps in the fourth quarter, and that Washington D.C. led the U.S. in average connection speed at 26.7 Mbps.
In terms of mobile connection speeds, the average rate ranged from a high of 26.8 Mbps in the U.K. and a low of 2.9 Mbps in Venezuela. The average mobile connection speed among qualified surveyed countries/regions exceeded 10 Mbps broadband in 30 of them, while 58 saw average speeds of 4 Mbps broadband or more; up from 52.
Q4 2016 also saw a slight decrease in the number of unique IPv4 addresses connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform with a total of nearly 807 million, down 0.4 percent from Q4 2015. Also, there was 6.4 million IPv4 allocations/assignments in Q4, down from 16 million in Q3 2016. Meanwhile, IPv6 continues to grow, particularly in Belgium, where 47 percent of its content requests originated, a 20 percent increase quarter-over-quarter.
There were also a number of instances where connectivity was disrupted in Q4. An incident in the Bahamas occurred due to Hurricane Matthew; Gambia dropped to zero on Nov. 30 before its country’s elections on Dec. 1, then returned to normal Dec. 2; the Iraqi government continued to occasionally block internet access across the country in what it says was to prevent cheating on exams; and Pakistan cited technical issues at Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited for a drop in traffic in December.
The full report can be accessed here.
