I’m not sure if any of us can really tell, but according to a new report, Virginia’s internet speeds are fastest in the nation.
I’m not sure if any of us can really tell, but according to a new report, Virginia’s internet speeds are fastest in the nation.
Akamai Technologies, a computing company based in Cambridge, Mass., released their last “State of the Internet” report seven years ago, and thought it was time to update – security data, numerous additional metrics, and the general growth of the internet have all spurred the company to generate this new document which is both informative and (honestly) hard to really wrap your head around without a CS degree – luckily, they’ve got charts and graphs!
See look, there’s good ol’ Virginny’ up top for average connection speed! But it wasn’t a quick rise – more details from the report:
The top 10 states in the fourth quarter showed a great deal of volatility—half of the states saw quarterly gains in average connection speeds while the other half saw losses. Virginia posted the largest gain at 22%, pushing it into first place from sixth in the previous quarter, while New York, Oregon, North Dakota and Rhode Island saw more moderate quarterly gains—ranging from 2.6% to 4.7%.
South Korea leads the world in average connection speed – with some speeds as high as 10 GB/s (about 600 times faster than us).
Why is SK so fast? There’s a number of theories, but the folks at IDG Connect, a global tech research group, believe it has to do with early investment in fiberoptic lines:
…in 2005, the large telecommunication companies came under pressure as smaller competitors began to pick up large pieces of the DSL (then the primary connection method in Korea) market. In response, Korea Telecom began to break ground on fiber optic networks throughout Korea, preserving their business and upgrading the country’s internet capabilities. It is precisely this kind of competition that creates an innovative technological environment.
Think Google Fiber for a local comparison here- they’re laying fiberoptic lines a few cities around the US and achieving 1GB/s speeds (1,000mb/s vs 17/mbs)
Interestingly enough, South Korea’s total number of internet users is dramatically less than the US’s – about 780 million less. I’m sure this doesn’t hurt their infrastructure or stress broadband systems like it does in the US.
There’s lots more interesting data in the report, if you’re into this kind of stuff, and you can find it here.
