Portugal among the 10 countries with the fastest Internet connections

Akamai’s new report on the state of the Internet shows that in the first quarter of the year the average speed of Internet access has not changed significantly, remaining at 1.7 Mbps, but there are changes in the average maximum speeds recorded, with a surprising drop of 2 Mbps compared to last year.

Portugal is well ranked in the maximum speed indicator, where it ranks eighth among countries where there is a higher average of maximum speeds. South Korea continues to lead this ranking, with 33 Mbps, but Europe gains 6 positions in the top ten.

The 16 mbps mentioned in the report as the average maximum speed in Portugal guarantee an honorable ninth position. The metric used by the Internet service company represents the average of the maximum connection speed on all IP addresses registered in a specific region, and Akamai argues that it gives a more accurate and transparent view of the bandwidth that users can take advantage of.

Portugal

Among the 100 fastest cities in the world Portugal also managed to qualify, with Coimbra in 75th place and a speed of 23 Mbps. This list is dominated by cities in Japan, with more than half of the positions, the United States and South Korea.

Portugal

In the analysis for the first quarter of 2010, Akamai indicates that, on average, speeds in the ten countries of the top ten there were no significant changes, and that there are 96 countries where the average Internet connection remains below 1 Mbps. Five countries are still in the dark ages, with speeds below 100 Kbps, and the worst ranked is Mayotte, a small island in the Indian Ocean, north of the Mozambique channel, where Internet access is done at an average speed of 40 Kbps.

In the first three months, the company monitored more than 487 million unique IP addresses, from 233 countries connected to its network, 7.2% more than in the last quarter of 2009 and 16% more than in the same period last year, which shows an increase in Internet penetration. China and the United States alone account for almost 40% of all monitored IP addresses.

Akamai also analyzed the speed of mobile connections and added that 83 of the 109 monitored operators offer speeds above 2 Mbps, with 33 exceeding 5 Mbps and six above 10 Mbps. Connections vary on average between 105 Kbps and 7.2 Mbps.