Korea still has fastest average broadband speeds

South Korea retained its position of having the world’s fastest average internet speeds during the first quarter, but it was the only market in APAC to experience a year-on-year speed decline.

These are among the findings of Akamai’s latest State of the Internet – Connectivity report, which found that South Korea’s average speed was 28.6Mbps for the quarter.

Hong Kong had the second fastest average speeds in APAC and the fourth in the world at 21.9Mbps, followed by Singapore (seventh globally) at 20.3Mbps and Japan (eighth globally) at 20.2Mbps.

Vietnam had the highest year-on-year gains in average speeds at 89%, but remained in ninth place among APAC countries and just 58^th globally with an average speed of 9.5Mbps. India (87% improvement to 6.5Mbs) and China (78% improvement to 7.6Mbps) also recorded strong gains.

The Philippines continued to have the slowest average broadband speeds in APAC at 5.5Mbps, despite a 57% year-on-year improvement. The report notes that president Duterte’s up to $4 billion national broadband network project has the potential to turn the market around. Deployment could commence as early as this month.

By contrast, besides South Korea’s year-on-year decline, Hong Kong had the lowest level of improvement with just a 10% gain.

In terms of average peak connection speeds, Singapore retained its top spot with a speed of 184.5Mbps, up 26% year-on-year. Singapore was followed by Hong Kong (129.5Mbps), South Korea (121Mbps), Thailand (106.6Mbps) and Taiwain (106.6Mbps), which had global rankings of fourth, fifth, eighth and 13^threspectively.

The slowest average peak connection speed was recorded in India (41.4Mbps), followed by the Philippines (45Mbps), China (45.9Mbps), Australia (55.7Mbps) and Sri Lanka (57.3Mbps).