Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong are the best wired in the world with the highest number of fast broadband connections to the Internet, according to a report by U.S.-based network provider Akamai Technologies.
South Korea boasts the world's highest average connection speed at 14.6 megabytes per second (mbps). Japan had the second highest average connection speed of 7.9 mbps, followed by the Chinese territory of Hong Kong with 7.6 mbps, said the report.
The other countries in the top 10 are Romania, followed by Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and the Czech Republic, with the United States at 18th place, with an average speed of 3.9 mbps.
The survey classifies "broadband" connections as those of two mbps or more, and "high broadband" as five mbps or over, while link-ups at 20 mbps and better were categorized as "extremely high speed connectivity."
In South Korea, 74% of connections were "high broadband," the world's top rate, while the figure was 60% in Japan, followed by Hong Kong with 46%, said the report.
The United States came 12th, with just 24% of its connections at five mbps or more.
Growing demand for online high-definition video content is driving demand for faster connections, said Akamai's State of the Internet report for the third quarter of 2009.
"As the quantity of HD-quality media increases over time and the consumption of that media increases, end users are likely to require ever-increasing amounts of bandwidth," the report said.
© Wire reports
22 Comments
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neverknow2
Sorry Japan, you are only number 2. Enjoy your failure!
keika1628
Ireland is narrow band in Dublin I'm on holiday here squelching out 2 Maga download & 514 upload in hotels
gogogo
How did they measure it? I'm guessing inside of the country only... if I stay inside Japan I can get upto 80mbit, outside around 7 at max.
goddog
Isn't there a possibility that America is such a huge land mass, that that has something to do with it? Countries with a large land mass such as mainland China, Russia, Brazil and the US should be granted a handicap here.
neverknow2
Actually I'm also number 2.
m5c32
nandakandamanda
Many South Koreans are addicted to on-line games.
chuckers
How about adding a few more free wireLESS points around Japan? That would certainly brighten my day a bit.
NeoJamal
Okay, just how much faster connection do you need to type "Kekekekeke Zerg rush"?
wanderlust
gogogo - How did they measure it? I'm guessing inside of the country only... if I stay inside Japan I can get upto 80mbit, outside around 7 at max.
It said average, so it covers a range of values.
sharky1
Well yeah...if you live in Japan or South Korea...duh...
Kronos
I am happy with the internet here. World of Warcraft has never been better :-)
fondofj
It's an old news. Just visit to this site and get an overview of worldwide internet speed and ranking. http://www.speedtest.net
LIBERTAS
Yeah, but's like Digiterrestrial Broadcasting: The programs still suck! Much of both countries' web links in the respective languages is pure tripe. How do you say, "Mayooooo!" in Korean?
bisoy
Japan second? I've Bern to the Philippines and I could always use wifi in shopping malls for free. Not in Japan.
PepinGalarga
this article is not talking about WIFI. They are just talking about the speed of wired connections, and this usually depends on how much fiber optic cable infrastructure has been laid down.
I agree with goddog having a large landmass does affect, because on average there are many areas in the US that are not developing as fast. This test should have been more useful if it's limited to the major cities, and then just rank the cities.
AirBetweenTeeth
JT, these figures are for megabits (Mb), not megabytes (MB) per second. Big difference. Not so long ago, speed performance was measured in the latter. When I came to Japan, I noticed that the standard abbreviation used for transfer speed was the deliberately ambiguous "M". Typical misleading ISP BS. If you want to find your Internet speed per second in MB as opposed to Mb (or "M"), divide by eight. Provides a much more realistic picture of what you're actually receiving — who the hell measures the size of a file in megabits?
m5c32
Storage in Bytes, throughput usually in bits. That's the default -unless specified otherwise.
bisoy
Oh I forgot to mention that my friend often goes to S Korea and there's wifi everywhere. What's the use of having high speed when there's so much nconvenience? That's why I mentioned wifi.
PepinGalarga
bisoy: there's no use in having WIFI everywhere if the router or modem are connected to narrowband or worse, dialup. Only fiber optic gives you equally fast up/down speed.
The speeds mentioned in the article are most likey download speeds, but in some networks, such as DSL, upload speeds are only a litte better than dialup.
With infrastructure such as Wimax and LTE getting rolled out, having to struggle to find a WIFI hotspot will also be a thing of the past.
motogaijin
I loved my fiberoptics connection in Japan and it was cheaper than what I'd pay for the same service here in the U.S. It does suck that a mobile society like Japan is lacking in free Wi-Fi, especially with all of the iPod Touches floating around. I expected it out in inaka where I lived, but was shocked when Tokyo was about the same in the number of free hotspots.
jason6
it's downloading heaven here