Need for Speed

Akamai released their Q1 2009 State of the Internet report yesterday (PDF, registration and CAPTCHA required - it's an adventure). It's a fascinating read.

Unique IPs observed by the Akamai network are up 27% year on year to over 419 million. Of course many of those IPs represent many users connected through a NAT. The global average Internet speed is up 29% year on year to 1.7 Mbps. South Korea leads the pack at 11 Mbps with the United States coming in eighteenth at 4.2. That's the average though - the US ranks thirty third for the percentage of the population with more than 2 Mbps - 63%, compared with 92% for the leader, Switzerland.

Unfortunately the report doesn't track upload speed. For most people this is around 20% of download speed which suggests that over a third of the US uploads at less than 400 Kbps.

Broadband access is increasingly a need rather than a luxury. It's embarrassing to see the US so far behind the rest of the world in both availability and diffusion.

There is hope - VP Biden said "Getting broadband to every American is a priority for this administration" last week while unveiling a $4.7 Bn program to bring high speed connections to underseved and unserved areas. We've blogged previously on President Obama's intention to start "laying broadband lines to every corner of America".

posted by Rob on Friday, July 10, 2009

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