South Korean and Japanese cities dominate the top 100 cities list. Amsterdam is the fastest city in Europe (ranked No. 33), and San Jose was once again the fastest city in the United States, with an average connection speed of 13 Mbps. It was ranked at No. 13 among the top 100 and was one of the 23 U.S. cities that made the list. Other U.S. cities in the top 100 include Plano, Texas (8.9 Mbps); Fremont, Calif. (8.6 Mbps); North Bergen, N.J. (8.5 Mbps); and Jersey City, N.J. (8.2 Mbps).

One of the biggest trends according to the report is growing mobile broadband speeds. “Average connection speeds on known mobile providers ranged from 6.1 Mbps down to 327 kbps, while average peak connection speeds in the quarter ranged from 22.2 Mbps to 1.4 Mbps,” the report data shows.

Here are some other notable facts from the report:

• The global average connection speed continued to see extremely strong yearly growth, increasing 39 percent from the third quarter of 2010.
• The global average peak connection speed grew 45 percent from the third quarter of 2010 to 11.7 Mbps in Q3 2011. South Korea is the country with the highest average peak connection speed, at 46.8 Mbps. Hong Kong also had an average peak connection speed above 40 Mbps, while Romania, Japan and Latvia were all above 30 Mbps.
• India finally achieved a 10 percent broadband adoption rate, which China had achieved in the second quarter.
• Despite rapid growth, China and India are only two countries with high broadband adoption of 1 percent or less. China stands at 1 percent adoption, and India has a 0.6 percent adoption. Akamai deems connections faster than 5 Mbps as “high broadband.”
• In the third quarter of 2011, global broadband adoption (2 Mbps or higher) grew 1.6 percent to reach 66 percent. The United States now has 81 percent broadband adoption, the report says.
• By average speeds, the Netherlands might be the fastest in Europe (9.5 Mbps), but when it comes to peak speeds, the Romanian city of Timişoara leaves it in the dust at 41.5 Mbps.

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Here are some factoids from the report:

• Nearly 60 percent of South Korean broadband connections had speeds of above 5 Mbps.
• South Korea also achieved the highest average connection speed at 14.4 Mbps. Hong Kong had an average connection speed of 9.2 Mbps, and Japan came in third with 8.1 Mbps.
• More than 40 countries/regions saw average connection speeds increase by 10 percent or more in the first quarter, a healthy sign for broadband adoption overall and even better news for startups building applications that consume a lot of bandwidth.
• Nearly 72 percent of all broadband connections in the state of Delaware were faster than 5 Mbps.
• Delaware also had the highest average connection speed, at 7.5 Mbps.
• Based on data collected by Ericsson, mobile data traffic saw 130 percent yearly growth in the first quarter and is now more than double the measured volume of voice traffic.
• During the first three months of 2011, there was a 5.2 percent increase in the number of unique IPv4 addresses connecting to Akamai’s global network. US, China and Japan were the top three countries in terms of unique IP addresses.

The fastest cities in the world

Akamai estimates that

• Japanese cities of Tokai, Shimotsuma, and Kanagawa were the three fastest cities in the world and had an average connection speeds of 13.2 Mbps, 12.9 Mbps, and 12.2 Mbps respectively.
• Lyse, Norway at 8.1 Mbps is the fastest city in Europe.
• Riverside, California had the highest average connection speed in North America of 7.8 Mbps.
• Asia had two-thirds of the top 100 fastest cities with Japan alone accounting for 61 cities. Eighteen cities from the United States and three from Canada made the list while Europe accounted for a dozen cities.

The fastest states & cities in the US

Akamai data shows that:

• Delaware had an average broadband connection speed of 7.5 Mbps, followed by Rhode Island with 6.8 Mbps and Wisconsin with 6.0 Mbps.
• Riverside, Calif., Staten Island, New York, and San Jose, Calif. are the three fastest cities in America with 7.8 Mbps in average broadband speed.
• Five out of top ten broadband cities are from the East Coast, thanks to the presence of Verizon’s FiOS and Comcast.

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