52 countries or regions have connection speeds capable of supporting 4K services, according to Akamai’s third quarter State of the Internet report.
The cloud services provider defines ‘4K readiness’ as those most likely to sustain connection speeds above 15 Mbps. Ultra HD adaptive bitrate streams typically require bandwidth between 10 and 20 Mbps.
Other factors such as the availability of displays – and significantly content – have not been taken into account.
While down 2.8% quarter-over-quarter, readiness increased 32% year-over-year. South Korea remained the country with the highest level of 4K readiness, with two-thirds of its connections to Akamai at or above 15 Mbps.
“One need only look to the sheer number of connected device- and smart home-related announcements that came out of the 2015 International CES to see that consumers are continuing to adopt and expect more from connected technology and services,” said David Belson, editor of the report. “The strong year-over-year growth trends illustrated in this quarter’s report show that the Internet is evolving and expanding to meet the growing demands of our increasingly connected lifestyles.”
Six of the top 10 countries saw increases in global average connection speeds, and all of the top 10 remained well above the 10 Mbps ‘high broadband’ threshold. Among those increasing in average connection speed quarter-over-quarter, Singapore experienced the largest rise (12.2 Mbps), an 18% improvement.
The smallest growth was in Japan (15 Mbps), which was only up 0.8% from the second quarter. In addition, Ireland (13.9 Mbps) joined Singapore in seeing an increase of 10% or more from the previous quarter. Yearly increases were seen in 129 qualifying countries/regions, with rates ranging from 150% in Jersey (9.7 Mbps) down to a modest 0.2% in Ecuador (3.6 Mbps).