Akamai records European broadband progress

Over 45% of European broadband customers connecting to Akamai in the fourth quarter of 2012 did so via internet connections at speeds of 4Mbps or above, according to the global CDN provider’s latest State of the Internet survey.

According to Akamai, among European countries, Switzerland and the Netherlands ranked number two and three globally for broadband connections, had 82% of all connections at 4Mbps or above.

The Czech Republic, number six globally, came next in Europe with 72% of connections above 4Mbps.

Only Turkey and Italy saw broadband speed progress go into reverse, with the number of 4Mbps-plus connections down 0.2% in both countries.

Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden topped the European rankings for internet connections of 10Mbps or above, with 23%, 21% and 19% of connections above that threshold respectively.

Average peak connection speeds grew by 10% across Europe, led by the UK, up 44% to 30.5Mbps, Spain, up 40% to 27.8Mbps and Austria, up 40% to 25.9Mbps.

Romania led the pack overall for average peak connection speed during the quarter, at 42.6Mbps.

Almost 700 million unique IPv4 addresses from 240 countries connected to the Akamai platform in the fourth quarter, up 4.2% quarter-on-quarter.