NZ broadband better than Australia - Akamai

AVERAGE BROADBAND CONNECTION SPEED - SELECTED COUNTRIES

South Korea: 14.4Mbit/s (1st)
Hong Kong: 9.2Mbit/s (2nd)
Netherlands: 7.5Mbit/s
US: 5.3Mbit/s
New Zealand: 3.5Mbit/s  
Australia: 3.4 Mbit/s
Global average: 2.1Mbit/s

New Zealand average peak connection: 13.7Mbit/s
Global average peak connection: 10.6Mbit/s

Cloud optimisation services provider Akamai released its State of the Internet report for the 2011 first quarter, which showed connection speeds in New Zealand and around the world had increased.

The report, published quarterly and now in its fourth year, said New Zealand connection speeds had increased, as they had globally.

South Korea had the highest level of high broadband connections globally while Myanmar had the highest amount of attack traffic.

Connection speeds in NZ
The report stated that average peak connection speeds in New Zealand have more than doubled over the past three years, from 5.8 Mbps in the first quarter of 2008 to 13.7Mbit/s in 2011.  Average connection speeds had also increased fairly steadily from 2.2Mbit/s in 2008 to 3.5Mbit/s  in 2011 - higher than Australia at 3.4Mbit/s. 

Akamai reported an average connection speed in the third and fourth quarter 2010 of about 3.4Mbit/s.

To put that in context, the first retailer to annouce a fibre plan under the government's $1.35 billion ultrafast broadband (UFB) roll-out is promising 50Mbit/s downloads. In the near future, plans are expected to be offered at 100Mbit/s and 1000Mbit/s.

The average web browsing speed in the Commerce Commission’s report on New Zealand Broadband Quality found from July to December 2010 was about 3.4 Mbps, but a spokeswoman said while the commission measured browsing speed, Akamai measured downloads.  The report also showed that New Zealand broadband connection speeds were increasing.

Global connection
Globally, the State of the Internet report said average peak connection speed jumped above 10Mbit/s for the first time, growing 20% from the end of 2010, and 65% from the beginning of last year. 

The average peak connection speed represents an average of the maximum measured connection speeds across all unique IP addresses in a given region seen by Akamai.

The global average connection speeds saw “healthy” quarterly growth after remaining flat in the fourth quarter of 2010, the report said, increasing nearly 10% to over 2Mbit/s. 

Year-on-year growth globally was “very healthy”, increasing 23%, with growth of 20% or more seen in South Korea, the Netherlands and Belgium.

South Korea had the highest average connection speed at 14.4Mbit/s, with Hong Kong second at 9.2Mbit/s.  The Netherlands had 7.5Mbit/s and Belgium had 6.1Mbit/s.  The United States clocked in at 5.3Mbit/s.

High broadband
High broadband adoption in New Zealand had increased, from 2% of all connections to Akamai’s Intelligent Internet Platform in 2008 to 15% in 2011.  High broadband was defined as connections at speeds of 5Mbit/s or more.

Globally, the report said high broadband adoption had increased 6% quarter-over-quarter with 25% of all connections and 15% year-over-year.

South Korea took out the top slot of the country with the highest adoption level of 60%, up from the previous quarter, but declined year-over-year by 10%. 13 countries saw high broadband adoption rates more than double year-over-year.  Globally, 6.7% of all connections exceeded 10Mbit/s, with South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong clocking in more than a quarter of their connections.

Plain ol' broadband
Broadband adoption in New Zealand, defined as connections at speeds of at least 2 Mbps, had a slight drop from the fourth quarter of 2010, from 76.5% of connections to 74%, but had increased from 2008’s 55.1%.

Globally, broadband adoption continued to increase slightly, with a 2% rise from the end of 2010 to reach 62%. 

Year-on-year, global broadband adoption grew 9.5%.  Luxembourg had the largest yearly increase of 33%.

Narrowband
Narrowband adoption, or connections at speeds less than 256Kbit/s, also dropped in New Zealand to 4.5%, continuing a trend since the second quarter of 2009, and following a global trend that saw the first quarter adoption level of 3.3% at 15% lower than the end of 2010 and 36% lower than the start of last year.

Data was collected during the first quarter of 2011 through Akamai’s global network of more than 100,000 servers in 72 countries. 

It includes all regions that had more than 25,000 unique IP addresses make requests to the company’s network during the first quarter. 

This was a different threshold to the 1,000 unique IP addresses used in the past; a change the company said it believed would help address unfair comparisons between very small and much larger countries.  Percentage changes are relative to the prior quarters.

Myanmar's attacks
The report also found that Myanmar had the highest percentage of attack traffic at 13% of global attack traffic, with the United States second at 10%.  At a continental level, Akamai found that nearly 50% of attack traffic came from the Asia/Pacific Oceania region.

The report took note of notable Internet outages, including the Egyptian government’s blackout in response to protests.  This led to brief disruptions in connections in Libya in the third week of February and a longer disruption in early March. 

The report also looked at the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami, saying that despite damage to sea cables, the natural disasters did not otherwise cause widespread or long-term Internet outages in the country.