In it’s third-quarter State of the Internet report, Akamai Technologies found that more people are connecting to the Web via mobile phones, and they’re surfing on those devices at significantly faster speeds overall.

Based on data collected by Ericsson, the volume of mobile data traffic doubled from the third quarter of 2011 to the third quarter of 2012 and grew 16 percent between the second and third quarters of 2012.

According to the report, average connection speeds on surveyed mobile network providers ranged from a high of 7.8 Mbps to a low of 324 kbps. Seven providers showed average connection speeds in the “broadband” (>4 Mbps) range. An additional 68 mobile providers had average connection speeds greater than 1 Mbps. Average peak connection speeds for the quarter ranged from 39.2 Mbps down to 2.8 Mbps.

Analysis of Akamai IO data collected in the third quarter indicates that for users of mobile devices on cellular networks connecting to the Akamai Intelligent Platform, the largest percentage of requests (37.6 percent) came from devices using the Android Webkit.

Devices using Apple’s Mobile Safari were a close second (35.7 percent). However, for users of mobile devices across all network types, Apple’s Mobile Safari accounted for 60.1 percent of requests, with the Android Webkit responsible for 23.1 percent.