Internet speeds double worldwide in the past year

Akamai measures internet speeds around the world ever year, and thing have gotten a lot faster: the average global speed now stands at 2.6Mbps, up 44 percent from last year. The charts are still dominated by Japan and South Korea, whose cities occupy every spot in the top 50 save for Canberra at 48 and plucky San Jose at number 9, with average speeds of 13.7Mbps. That’s the first time a US city has been in the top ten, and the country as a whole has moved up to 12th place from 14th, with an average of 5.8Mbps. It’s a moderate success that’s been brought about by a 26 percent climb in average speeds on last quarter, against a global average of 43 percent.

Meanwhile, mobile data consumption has doubled over the past year, with the average speed in the US hitting 1.2 Mbps and the average peak standing at 3.9Mbps. The data is collected by Ericsson on each network it manages, and unfortunately the names of the networks are anonymised, so we can’t draw speed comparisons, but in any case, we can expect these numbers to jump through the roof when LTE proliferates next year.