Akamai reports 14% rise in world internet traffic in Q1

Akamai Technologies reported an almost 14 percent annual increase in internet traffic in the first quarter. More than 666 million unique IP addresses from 238 countries and regions around the world connected to the Akamai Intelligent Platform in the quarter, up 6 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011, according to the company's latest 'State of the Internet' report. The top 10 connecting countries represented nearly 66 percent of the global figure, while China, Brazil, Italy, and Russia all maintained annual growth rates of over 20 percent in the number of IP address connections. 

The latest report changes Akamai's definition of 'broadband' and 'high broadband' connections to respectively at least 4Mbps and 10Mbps or higher. Global adoption of high broadband reached 10 percent, up 19 percent quarter-over-quarter. Among the top 10 countries for high broadband adoption, South Korea was first with 53 percent penetration, followed by Japan (37%), Hong Kong (28%), Latvia (26%) and the Netherlands (24%). 

The global average connection speed in the first quarter was 2.6 Mbps, up 25 percent from a year ago. South Korea also had the highest average connection speed, at 15.7 Mbps, followed by Japan (10.9 Mbps), Hong Kong (9.3 Mbps), the Netherlands (8.8 Mbps) and Latvia (8.8 Mbps).

Among mobile internet providers, Akamai found the fastest average connection speed was with in an operator in Germany, at slightly less than 6 Mbps. Only five operators worldwide had an average connection speed of greater than 4 Mbps, while 65 mobile operators averaged over 1 Mbps. The highest peak speed was with a provider in Hong Kong, at 32.2 Mbps, while six mobile operators had average peak connection speeds of greater than 20 Mbps – double the number of the previous quarter.