New numbers provided by Akamai, a cloud services provider, indicate that Internet connection speeds are on the rise all over the world. Akamai published these figures in a report it entitled the “State of the Internet,” a possible play on tonight’s State of the Union address.
Akamai claims that during the third quarter of 2013, the speed of the average Internet connection rose 10 percent to 3.6 MBps. In all, 122 nations/regions enjoyed a rise in their average Internet connection speed. Growth in these places varied though, from incremental rises (a 0.5 percent bump in Namibia to an average connection speed of 1.1 MBps) to extremely sharp upward spikes (average Internet connection speeds rose by 76 percent to 3.6 MBps).
On top of that, more people are getting broadband Internet. The adoption of Internet connections of 10 MBps and higher rose by 31 percent when compared with the third quarter of 2012, while connections of 4 MBps of higher also saw a sharp rise in prevalence, enjoying an uptick of 5.8 percent within the same time frames.
Here’s what David Belson had to say about Akamai’s report.
“In the third quarter of 2013, we observed that long-term growth in average and average peak connection speeds remained strong, as did growth in global broadband and high broadband adoption rates. We believe these trends point to continued improvement in the quality and performance of Internet connectivity in countries around the world.”
We agree. Barring catastrophic events in these nations, like environmental disasters, that would pose significant risk to the infrastructures of these places, we also expect Internet connection speeds to continue to rise as well.
What do you think? Sound off in the comments below. Contact the author at kkrawczyk@digitaltrends.com.
