(Photo : Way Over in the High Speed Lane)

Recently, Akamai Technologies, world's leading Internet content delivery network, released a comprehensive report on global average Internet speed. Akamai Technologies, Inc. is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. Akamai's network is one of the world's largest distributed-computing platforms, responsible for serving between 15 and 20 percent of all web traffic.

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The data of average connection speeds are gathered by Akamai's platform from more than 200 countries in the world. The highlight of the report was that the global average connection speed increased 4 percent from 2.9 Mbps to 3.1 Mbps between Q4 2012 and Q1 2013. According to the 2013 Q3 State of Internet Report, the South Korea ranks first in average connection speed, followed by Japan at second and Hong Kong at third place. Besides, the United States ranks 9^th. However, Mainland China is seriously behind in World average connection speeds.

Specifically, South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong all saw modest quarterly increases, growing to 14.2 Mbps, 11.7 Mbps, and 10.9 Mbps respectively. Quarter-over-quarter changes across the Asia Pacific regions were generally positive, with only Mainland China and Vietnam seeing minor quarterly losses. Quarter-over-quarter change declines for 5.6% in Mainland China.

As for year-over-year changes in the Asia Pacific region, Japan was the only country in the region to see a yearly increase below 10% (at 6.8%), while Indonesia saw the most significant growth, up 113% from a year prior. Four additional countries grew more than 30% year-over- year, and three more saw increases in the 20% range. Taiwan, New Zealand, and Hong Kong rounded out the group with year-over-year growth at or above 10%. And Mainland China's year-over-year growth is 20%.

Despite having the world's largest Internet population, average connection speeds in Mainland China is only 1.7 Mbps. Comparing to the average connection speed of 3.1 Mbps, China's connection speed is so pathetic. And China's global rank is 98^th which is even behind Thailand and Malaysia.