Broadband speed: Kerala is No.1

From its third position which it held in the trailing quarter of 2009, Kerala -- with an average speed of 1,386 Kbps - has pushed down Haryana (the second quarter's topper) to the second spot (with 1,105 Kbps) and Karnataka to the third position (1,041 kbps), the 'State of the Internet' report by Akamai Technologies for the October-December quarter reveals.

Many states maintained average speeds above 768 Kbps. However, while internet speed in the country continue to grow, India's global rank for average connection speed stands only at 97 (of 226 countries) at 895 kbps, according to the latest Akamai report.

Globally, the average connection speed increased 18 per cent to 1.7 Mbps - a level consistent with the April-June quarter of 2009.

 

TOP 10 STATES
	State	Q3 09 (Kbph)	Q2-Q3 (% chg)	YoY (% chg)
1	Kerala	1,386.00	28.00	64.00
2	Haryana	1,105.00	-13.00	3.00
3	Karnataka	1,041.00	-5.00	7.00
4	Uttar Pradesh	977.00	25.00	163.00
5	Gujarat	932.00	-8.00	-7.00
6	Jammu & Kashmir	923.00	-4.00	18.00
7	Maharashtra	917.00	3.00	9.00
8	Delhi	896.00	-5.00	-1.00
9	Tamil Nadu	810.00	-1.00	5.00
10	Andhra Pradesh	643.00	-10.00	-18.00

The average Internet speed in Indian states, too, is much lower than the average speed in Asia of 4,400 Kbps. For instance, the average speed in the US is 3,792 kbps, in Europe 3,536 Kbps, Africa and South America are at 944 and 1,304 kbps, respectively.

In terms of broadband connection speeds in India, too, only 0.7 per cent used over 5 Mbps speeds. This is up 26 per cent on a year-on-year basis. Compared this to South Korea, the broadband connectivity above 5 Mbps is 74 per cent.

The majority of countries within the top 10 (based on average measured connection speed) saw average connection speeds increase on a quarter-over-quarter basis.

Among the top 10 countries, seven of them saw flat to higher average connection speeds during October-December 2009.

Also during the quarter under review, 103 of the 226 countries measured had average connection speeds below 1 Mbps, down from 125 countries in the prior quarter.

Romania, Sweden, and the Czech Republic all saw quarterly declines in their average connection speeds, though they all maintained positive yearly growth.

The US (ranking 18th overall), on the other hand, saw a small quarterly gain in average connection speeds - increasing to 3.9 Mbps - but declined slightly from a year-over-year perspective.

The lowest average connection speed seen in the third quarter was 43 Kbps on the island of Mayotte, located between northern Madagascar and northern Mozambique in the Indian Ocean.

Meanwhile, India ranked 21 globally for the number of unique internet protocol (IP) addresses seen by Akamai, with over 3 million IPs. Delhi and Maharashtra continued to top the list with over 1 million unique IPs each. This is up 29 per cent on a year-on-year basis and 0.8 per cent increase on a sequential basis.

With regard to online attacks, during the third quarter of 2009, Akamai observed 'attack traffic' originating from 207 unique countries, nearly consistent with 201 unique countries in the second quarter.

In a shift from previous quarters, Russia and Brazil unseated the US and China as the two largest attack traffic sources, accounting for nearly 22 per cent of observed traffic in total. Russia ranked first with 13 per cent of observed attack traffic, followed by Brazil with 8.6 per cent.

India ranked ninth globally, with 3.4 per cent of observed attack traffic. Akamai observed attack traffic targeted at more than 3,800 unique ports, with the top 10 ports seeing nearly 95 percent of the observed attack traffic, up from 90 per cent in the second quarter.

From this quarter, Akamai also provided a look at the top 10 fastest cities per continent/region. In Asia, Europe, and North America, for example, even the slowest cities in the top 10 saw measured speeds in excess of 10 Mbps.

At the city level, Slovakia has four of the top 10 fastest cities in Europe, with average speeds between 11-14 Mbps.

Brazil has four of the top 10 fastest cities in South America, with average speeds between 1.6-1.9 Mbps. No Indian city, however, figured, in this ranking.

Within Asia, the top cities by region in terms of average measured connection speed is Beersheva in Israel with a speed of 25,184 kbps.

This is followed by Kowloongtong and Saikung in Hong Kong with 20,323 and 19,288 Kbps speeds, respectively. In Taiwan, Taoyuan leads with a speed of 18,585 Kbps. The list also has cities from South Korea.