US Lagging In Global Average Connection Speeds !

Just ask Lightning McQueen; it's all about speed. Pure, unadulterated, untapped Internets, flowing through your mouse finger and delivering all the Netflix, MOG and MaximumPC.com you could ever want, before you know you even wanted. We just told you yesterday that some folks in Britain have just begun to drink deep from the broadband well. How are we holding up here in the US? Are our connected tubes more Speed Racer or Red Racer? Akamai's newly released "State of the Internet Q1 2011" spells it out for us. Be forewarned, Americans; the news ain't pretty.
The US has the largest presence in the online world, claiming 142,605,731 of the 584,821,069 global unique IP addresses (China comes in 2nd with a scant 73m+). Unfortunately, the strength lies only in numbers, not in speed. The US falls into the 14th slot as far as pure Internet speed goes, with an average connection of 5.3Mbps. That lags far behind South Korea, which sits in the top spot with an average connection speed of 14.4Mbps.
So how do the numbers add up Stateside? Delaware, apparently, is full of speed demons; it's the state with the fastest average connection speed, at 7.5Mbps. Interestingly, four of the top ten states with the speediest connections fall in the New England Region. Staten Island, NY and the California cities of Riverside and San Jose are the cities to move to for raw power; citizens there enjoy brisk average connection speeds of about 7.8Mbps, the fastest in the nation.

 

Japan's the place to move to if you want to stream tons of Netflix videos. The country holds the top nine spots in Akamai's list of the cities with the fastest peak connections in the world, with all of them topping speeds of 40Mbps. All in all, 54 Japanese cities claim a slot on the list; the US only holds 25 spots.

Are you a number geek? You can dig into the full report at Akamai's website, but you'll need to register with the firm first.

Image credit: Akamai

Posted in: NEWS,TECHNOLOGY NEWS