Consumers will have attached a plethora of new devices to broadband networks worldwide by the end of the holiday season, to put it mildly. But will they generally be happy with connection speeds? Just-released Q3 data from Akamai Technologies suggests things are looking solid on the speed limit front.
According Akamai’s “Third Quarter, 2016 State of the Internet Report,” the global average connection speed increased 2.3 percent to 6.3 Mbps in Q3 2016, which is a 21 percent increase year over year (YoY). The report is based on data gathered from the Akamai Intelligent Platform, and offers statistics on connection speeds, broadband adoption metrics, notable internet disruptions, IPv4 exhaustion, and IPv6 implementation.
“The holiday season serves as one of the true tests of internet connectivity as consumers activate slews of connected devices at the same time and more families are at home collectively pushing their broadband capabilities to the limit,” David Belson, editor of the report, says. “The good news is those limits are getting higher as we have continued to observe positive long-term trends in both average and average peak connection speeds around the world. While ‘batteries not included’ may still cause unwelcome surprises, we’re optimistic that connection speeds won’t spoil the holidays this year.”
Akamai’s report notes that South Korea had the highest average connection speed at 26.3 Mbps in the third quarter. It also says that global average peak connection speed increased 3.4 percent to 37.2 Mbps in the third quarter, rising 16 percent YoY. Singapore had a very zippy showing with its highest average peak connection speed at 162 Mbps in Q3, according to the Akamai data. The report also says that global 10 Mbps broadband adoption rate rose 5.4 percent quarter over quarter, and 15 Mbps and 25 Mbps broadband adoption rates increased 6.5 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively.
The number of unique IPv4 addresses reportedly connecting to the Akamai Intelligent Platform was just over 806 million, which is 0.7 percent more than in Q2 2016. Belgium is said to be the clear global leader in IPv6 adoption with 39 percent of its connections to Akamai occurring over IPv6, up 3.3 percent from the previous quarter.
The report stresses that cable and wireless/mobile providers continued to drive the largest volumes of IPv6 requests, with Comcast, AT&T Communications Americas, and Verizon Wireless topping the list with 44 percent, 43 percent, and 80 percent of their requests to Akamai being made over IPv6 in their regions, respectively.
