Akamai have just published their First Quarter 2012 Report – The State of the Internet (available on registration).
As we mentioned previously they also have a couple of neat data visualisations with variable metrics by country (links from our header and the first graphic).
At an overview level:
| Average connection speeds | ||||||
| Quarter 1 2012 | ||||||
| Global rank # | kbps | kbps | QoQ % | YoY % | ||
| Q1 2012 | Q4 2011 | Q1 2012 | Q4 2011 | Increase | Increase | |
| Global | - | - | 2.6 | 2.3 | 14% | 25% |
| UK | 21 | 25 | 5.6 | 4.9 | 10% | 20% |
| USA | 12 | 13 | 6.7 | 5.8 | 17% | 29% |
| Source: Akamai The State of the Internet | ||||||
As far as Europe is concerned we are in position 15 of the 21 countries they detail in their EMEA categorisation. Wikipedia reckons in total there are approximately 50 European states.
On an EU-27 only basis we would rank 13th of the 18 they list lying between Austria and Portugal. This 13th position is the same as Q4 of 2011.
We suppose that a way of looking at it apart from the absolute would be to express a countries speed as a percentage/factor of the highest/global speed.. So we stand at 35.7% (28%) of the highest and are 2.2 (2.1) times the global average.
We think the infrastructure of a country is of the utmost economic performance and that as a country on various criteria we should at least aim to be in the upper decile of our main economic competitors.
Possibly as with our Olympic performance in London 2012 and Beijing 2008 we should aim to be up there in the top 5 in the world!
