UK Average Broadband Speeds Fall in Q4

Britain is suffering from decreasing broadband speeds, according to Akamai’s fourth quarter ‘State of the Internet’ report.

The report found that UK speeds had decreased from 5.1Mbps to 4.9Mbps during the last quarter of 2011 as part of a worldwide trend.

Worldwide trends

“The global average connection speed saw an unusual, and fairly significant, decline in the fourth quarter of 2011, dropping to 2.3 Mbps,” said the report. “It was reflected in declines in eight of the top 10 countries, as well as the United States. Globally, 93 countries/regions that qualified for inclusion saw average connection speeds decline, ranging from a loss of just 0.3 percent in Kyrgyzstan to a 31 percent drop in Kuwait.”

South Korea boasted the world’s fastest average speeds of 17.5Mbps, ahead of Japan and Hong Kong, with the highest placed European country being the Netherlands in fourth with 8.2Mbps, down by 3.2 percent from the previous quarter. Latvia, Switzerland Ireland, Czech Republic, Romania and Belgium completed the top ten.

The UK recorded the 25^th fastest average speeds in Europe, despite recent investment in fibre. UK ISPs have been forced to defend their use of ‘up to’ in broadband advertising and it was recently reported that speeds fall by a third at peak times due to TV streaming.

South Korean cities also placed well in the top 100 broadband locations worldwide, occupying the first six positions. Japan had 61 cities on the list, whilst there were 22 American cities, two Canadian and seven European locations, the highest of which was Umea in Sweden in 15^th place. A previous Akamai report listed Bradford as the 99^th fastest broadband location in the world last April, but no British city made the list this time round.

China was named as the source of most attack traffic with 13 percent, despite recent claims it was the victim of the most cyber attacks, closely followed by the US with 10 percent and Indonesia with 7.6 percent.

However the UK did top the table of countries with the greatest increase of unique IP addresses, reporting a 13 percent quarter-on-quarter increase, taking the total number to 25 million.

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