The UK has the 25th fastest high-speed Internet access in the world, according to Akamai’s latest State of the Internet report, behind European countries like the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
The quarterly report, "State of the Internet", includes data gathered across Akamai’s global server network about attack traffic, average and maximum connection speeds, Internet penetration and broadband adoption.
The report found that although high speed access in the UK increased 70% year-on-year, only 30% of UK connections have been marked as high-speed broadband, compared to over 68% of Dutch broadband lines with speeds of 5Mbps or more.
The report said that the Netherlands have the fastest Internet speeds in Europe. The UK is in 15th place in the list of 22 European countries, while the US features at the 12th place.
The countries at the top three are South Korea at 13.8Mbps, Hong Kong at 10.3Mbps and Japan at 8.9Mbps Internet speeds. Among the European countries, the Netherlands with 8.5Mbps, the Czech Republic with 7.4Mbps and Switzerland with 7.3Mbps are placed at fourth, fifth and sixth positions respectively.
Asia dominated the rankings among the fastest cities, with Japanese and South Korean cities covering most of the list. Of the 100 fastest cities, 59 were in Japan and 10 were in South Korea. The fastest European city in the report is Brno in the Czech Republic, ranked number 55 with an average connection speed of 8.3Mbps. There were no UK cities in the list.
However, the UK was placed 11th worldwide in terms of general broadband connectivity, with over 91% of users having a speed of 2Mbps or greater. Bulgaria with 97% was the top ranked country, while the Czech Republic with 95% was placed at the second rank in general broadband connectivity.
