IT Brief New Zealand - Technology news for CIOs & IT decision-makers
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Kiwi broadband: Improving but could do better
Thu, 26th Mar 2015
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Kiwi internet speeds are on the up, but are still lagging many international counterparts despite recording solid increases across the board.

Akamai's Q4 2014 State of the Internet report says New Zealand saw an increase of 59% year-on-year in terms of average connection speeds, however still ranked 43rd globally, meaning even with that improvement we only keeping pace.

Forty-third was also our global position in terms of high broadband – above 10Mbps – connectivity. That's a spot lower than last quarter.

The news on the ‘above 4Mbp' broadband was better, with New Zealand coming in at 30th – an increase of three places, and well ahead of our trans-Tasman neighbours, who could only manage 44th.

Our 4K readiness rates more than doubled compared with the previous year.

The report is compiled by analysing web traffic delivered by Akamai's globally distributed Akamai Intelligent Platform, which delivers over two trillion interactions daily.

Global average connection speed remained above the 4Mbps ‘broadband' threshold, increasing a nominal 0.7% to 4.5Mbps.

The global peak average connection speed increased 8.4% in the fourth quarter to 26.9Mbps. Hong Kong had the highest average peak connection speeds at 87.7Mbps, with all of the top 10 seeing average peak speeds greater than 60Mbps.

Meanwhile, global high broadband - over 10Mbps – adoption rates increased 2.9% in Q4, after a slight decline in Q3.

The 4Mbps broadband adoption rate decreased slightly for the period, losing 0.7% to 59% adoption.