Akamai: Average U.S. broadband connection speed passes 5 Mb/s

The average broadband Internet connection speed in the U.S. accelerated by more than nine percent from the fourth quarter of 2009 to the fourth quarter of 2010, while Internet penetration jumped worldwide, according to Akamai Technologies’ latest State of the Internet report.

The report, which uses data collected from hundreds of millions of connections made to 84,000 Akamai Internet Platform servers in 72 countries every quarter, shows that the average connection speed in the U.S was 5.1 Mb/s, which was up about 9.2 percent from the same period in 2009. Also, more than 75 percent of U.S. connections to Akamai during the quarter were above 2 Mb/s. The state with the fastest average connection was Delaware at 7.2 Mb/s, and the U.S. city with the fastest average broadband connections was Riverside, Calif., at 7.58 Mb/s.

Those average U.S. speeds still pale in comparison to the long-standing world leader in that department, South Korea, which as a country had an average connection speed of 13. 7 Mb/s, with its fastest city averaging above 18 Mb/s.

Because Akamai’s numbers are derived from a vastly deployed platform, they have been viewed as a trusted source for speed data, a much-debated aspect of the broadband reform discussion.

Akamai’s data also showed that Internet penetration worldwide continues to increase, with more than 556 million unique IP addresses from 234 countries and regions connecting to Akamai in the fourth quarter of last year, representing a jump of more than 20 percent year-over-year.

Among other findings, Akamai said 89 of the 105 mobile carriers it surveyed saw their average mobile data consumption increase in the fourth quarter year-over-year, while 96 of them reported increases in average mobile data connection speed.

Akamai also saw a shift in Internet attack traffic that will be seen as good news domestically. The U.S. dropped from second place to fifth place among the top sources for attack traffic. The U.S. now accounted for 7.3 percent of attack traffic, while No. 1 source Russia was responsible for about 10 percent.