U.S. Ranked 18th in World for Average Broadband Speed

According to a report released by content delivery network Akamai, the average broadband speed in the U.S. had declined by 2.4 percent in the third quarter of 2009 compared to the same quarter in 2008. In its State of the Internet report, the company said the U.S. ranks 18th in the world with an average broadband speed of 3.9 Mbps. Take a look at the top 10:

• South Korea, 11 Mbps
• Japan, 7.3 Mbps
• Hong Kong, 6.9 Mbps
• Romania, 6.2 Mbps
• Sweden, 6.0 Mbps
• Netherlands, 5.1 Mbps
• Latvia, 5.1 Mbps
• Switzerland, 5.0 Mbps
• Czech Republic, 4.9 Mbps
• Denmark, 4.7 Mbps

Within the United States, Delaware currently leads the average broadband speed with 7.2 Mbps. New Hampshire and Massachusetts tie for second with an average speed of 5.9 Mbps. The states with the fastest average broadband speeds can all be found on the East Coast.

The report also states that the number of unique IP addresses has increased globally by about 4.5 percent since the second quarter of 2009. With more than 119 million, the United States still has the most unique IP addresses by a large margin, but that number is growing at a much slower rate than the number of new IP addresses in China. The Chinese addresses increased by 30 percent over the second quarter of 2009, while the U.S. addresses increased by only 9 percent.

Attack traffic, such as botnets and other malicious devices, and their country of origin were also examined in the report. According to Akamai, 13 percent of attack traffic originates in Russia, followed by 8.6 percent from Brazil and 6.9 percent from the United States. China saw a significant decline in attack traffic originating from that country, down from 31 percent in the second quarter of 2009 to 6.5 percent in the third quarter.