The annual report showed a significant increase in average internet connectivity across Europe, with the Netherlands leading the way with an average connection speed of 8.8Mbps.
Akamai said there were more than 666 million unique IP addresses from 238 countries and regions connected to its intelligent platform, up 6% from Q4 2011. Brazil, China, Italy and Russia all maintained annual growth rates of over 20% in the number of IP address connections.
As part of the report, Akamai has made provisions clear of what it means by ‘broadband’ and ‘high broadband’ connections, which defines 4Mbps and 10Mbps or higher respectively.
Adoption of high broadband reached 10% globally, with South Korea top with a 53% adoption rate. Asian countries largely made up the top 10, with Japan and Hong Kong reaching 37% and 28% adoption respectively.
For the first quarter of the year, the global average connection speed was 2.6Mbps, up 25% from a year ago. It was in Germany that Akamai found the fastest average connection speed, at slightly less than 6Mbps, but only five operators worldwide had an average speed over 4Mbps.
65 mobile operators had an average connection speed of 1Mbps.
