The United States saw a decline in the average number of high-speed Internet connections between the third quarter of 2008 and the third quarter of 2009, according to data gathered by Akamai , a provider of global Internet content delivery and security infrastructure. The average connectivity speed in the U.S. was 3.9 Mb/s in third quarter 2009, down 1.8% from a year earlier, according to Akamai’s recently released State of the Internet Report for third quarter 2009.
The drop was driven in part by an 8.8% decline in the percentage of connections above 5 Mb/s, which stood at 24% at the end of third quarter 2009. During the same period, the percentage of users connecting at speeds above 2 Mb/s also declined, dropping 11% to an average of 57%.
Despite the overall decline, however, half of all states saw average connection speeds that remained the same or increased between third quarter of 2008 and third quarter 2009, topped by Hawaii, which saw its average connection speed increase 40% during that period.
Delaware now leads the nation, with an average connectivity speed of 7.2 Mb/s, driven in part by a 15% increase between second and third quarter 2009. Eight of the other top ten states are also in the Northeast, including New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, New York, Connecticut, the District of Columbia and Maine. The only exception was Utah, which came in at #10 with an average connectivity speed of 5.2 Mb/s.
Akamai’s data is collected on an IP address basis and includes a mixture of business and consumer connections. Despite the decline in the number of high-speed connections, Akamai said overall U.S. Internet connectivity rates increased 9% between third quarter 2008 and 2009, topping the rest of the world in total number of IP connections with over 119 million unique IP addresses.
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Categories: Broadband
