U.S falling behind in Internet speeds

The world has been seeing improved Internet speeds as a whole for the last few quarters, but one country just isn’t seeing any of it.

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That country is the United States.

According to a new report from cloud services provider Akamai, the average global Internet connection speed increased by 1.8% to 3.9 Mbps in the last quarter, January to March. Compared to this time last year, the average speed is up an impressive 13% globally, which puts it on pace with expected growth rates.

Though the United States saw an increase of 10% to 10.5 Mbps average connection speed, its overall growth is not nearly what was expected by the time this study was conducted. It has fallen behind the rest of the world with growth, and now ranks 12th out of the 98 countries that were surveyed in this study.

The top 10 countries in terms of average Internet connection speed are as follows:

1. South Korea — 23.6 Mbps
2. Japan — 14.6
3. Hong Kong — 13.3
4. Switzerland — 12.7
5. Netherlands — 12.4
6. Latvia — 12.0
7. Sweden — 11.6
8. Czech Republic — 11.2
9. Finland — 10.7
10. Ireland — 10.7

The study also took a look at individual state growth in terms of broadband Internet speed. Virginia, though remaining the top state in terms of average speeds, was the only state to see its average connection speed decline, dropping 4.3% from the fourth quarter of 2013.

Alaska remained the slowest state in the nation, but it made up ground on states like Montana, Kentucky and Arkansas in terms of overall speed.

The top ten states in terms of Internet connection speed are:

1. Virginia — 13.7
2. Delaware — 13.1
3. Massachusetts — 13.1
4. Rhode Island — 12.9
5. District Of Columbia — 12.8
6. Washington — 12.5
7. New Hampshire — 12.3
8. Utah — 12.1
9. Michigan — 11.8
10. Connecticut — 11.7

When it comes to the readiness of individual states in the country to adapt the latest quality of video — 4K HD — Akamai found that the nation as a whole isn’t full prepared in terms of broadband internet speeds to consistently stream 4K HD video at a high quality, which requires between 10-20 Mbps of bandwidth to stream.

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