Akamai has released its report for the state of the internet in the first quarter of 2016; which shows that global internet speeds have risen over the past year. More importantly, it looks like broadband speeds in Malaysia have made significant strides forward in quality.
The global average internet speed rose by 12-percent from the tail end of 2015; reaching 6.3 Mbps. This was also a 23-percent increase from Q1 2015.
As has become the norm, South Korea had the highest average internet connection speed at 29 Mbps. It represents an 8.6-percent change over Q4 2015. Similarly, the majority of the top 10 countries were either from north Europe or Asia Pacific. With only Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland being the odd ones out.
Things are also looking up on the local front, with Malaysian internet speeds being among the most improved in the region. Our average connection speed of 6.3 Mbps is marginally higher than the global average, but also showed an increase of 22-percent over the end of 2015. This also puts the country as the second most improved – behind Vietnam – in the Asia Pacific region.
The percentage of internet connections above 4 Mbps, 10 Mbps, and 15 Mbps from Malaysia saw the biggest increase. Some 68-percent of Malaysian internet connections were recorded above 4 Mbps, a jump of 23-percent from the end of 2015 and 58-percent from the beginning of last year.
Similarly 11-percent of Malaysian connections were detected at being above 10 Mbps; double that of what was seen in Q4 2015. The number of connections above 15 Mbps was 3.1-percent, a 158-percent increase of Q4 2015.
Mobile connections were not left out of the quarterly study, although countries were not ranked. Malaysia recorded an average mobile data connection speed of 3.3 Mbps; barely higher than the lowest speed recorded by Akamai at 2.2 Mbps. Naturally, South Korea had the highest regional speed at 13 Mbps.
Despite this, it looks like Malaysia’s internet speeds are managing to keep up with the rest of the world. The jumps in the average and peak connection speeds are a good sign of the local network infrastructure. That being said, it looks like our mobile data connections still have quite a bit of work to be done.
[Source: Akamai]
