Korea: Fastest Internet Connections in the World

Akamai has released its latest quarterly State of the Internet report, this one for the 3rd quarter of 2009.  Not surprisingly, it shows that South Korea continues to have the fastest internet connection speeds in the world, and by quite some margin over second ranked Japan.  As shown in the graphic in the upper left (click to see full-size graphic), Koreans on average connected to broadband internet at a speed of 14.6 megabits per second, almost twice as fast as the 7.9 Mbps recorded for second-place Japan.   (Note that Akamai uses its globally-deployed server network to collect data for these reports.  The company estimates that it sees over a billion internet users.)
For further detail, readers will want to download and read the entire report.  Some of the highlights include:

• South Korea has six of the top ten fastest cities in Asia, all with average speeds above 15 Mbps.  They were Masan, Iksan, Koyang, Seocho, Poryong, and Ilsan.
• 74 percent of the nation's population connected to broadband internet at speeds greater than 5 Mbps.  This compared to 60 percent in Japan and much lower percentages in other nations around the world.  Only 24 percent of U.S. citizens connected at speeds above 5 Mbps.
• The breakdown of speed distribution for leading countries, as shown in the graphic below (click to see full size version) shows that South Korea's drive toward implementing Fiber To the Home (FTTH) is having an impact.  Sixteen percent of the population connected at speeds greater than 25 Mbps, a figure no other country matched.