East Asian countries led by South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan are the best wired in the world with the highest number of fast broadband connections to the Internet, a recent report said.
South Korea boasts the world’s highest average connection speed at 14.6Mbps and also has six of Asia’s 10 cities with the fastest link-ups, all with average speeds above 15Mbps.
Japan ranked second, with an average connection speed of 7.9Mbps, followed by Hong Kong with 7.6 Mbps, the report by US-based network provider Akamai Technologies said.
The other countries in the top 10 are Romania, followed by Sweden, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark and the Czech Republic, with the US at 18th place, with an average speed of 3.9Mbps.
The survey classifies broadband connections as those of 2Mbps or more, and “high broadband” as 5Mbps and above, while link-ups at 20Mbps and better were categorized as “extremely high speed connectivity.”
In South Korea, 74 percent of connections were “high broadband,” the world’s top rate, while the figure was 60 percent in Japan, followed by Hong Kong with 46 percent, the report said.
Worldwide, the high broadband percentage was 19 percent.
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 last year.
“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.
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