According to new data compiled by Akamai, a cloud and Internet security services firm, the United States ranks seventh in the world in the amount of Internet connections rated at 10MBps or higher that are installed, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Akamai says that the U.S. weighs in with 36 percent of connections that are 10MBps or higher. That’s right behind Latvia: 37 percent of that nation’s connections are 10Mbps or faster. The U.S. is barely ahead of both Denmark and Belgium. In both of those cases, 35 percent of their connections are 10MBps or more.
Tops on the list is South Korea. 77 percent of their Internet connections are 10Mbps or speedier. Behind them is Japan, with a 10MBps connection percentage of 54.
It’s worth noting that simply from a geographical standpoint, all of the nations that are ahead (and directly behind) the United States in this area are significantly smaller. According to worldatlas.com, the American land mass consists of over 3.5 million square miles. South Korea, on the other hand, only covers over 37,000 square miles.
Considering how physically small Americas competition is when it comes to building and adopting Internet connections of 10MBps or higher, it’s no wonder that all of the nations ahead of the U.S. in this area are significantly more diminutive. After all, it’s much easier to wire up a small country where the population is located in a more compact area, than it is to do so here, where massive populations are spread out across a country as vast as this one.
