Utah has once again risen in the ranks of 
broadband capability to fourth among the states and fifteenth internationally. According to the Akamai Q1 2015 State of the Internet report, Utah’s average connection speed is 15.7 Mbps which is only behind the District of Columbia, Virginia, and Delaware which averaged 18.6 Mbps. In Q4 2014, Akamai reported that Utah was in sixth place nationally.
The report, which details several topics ranging from Internet URL availability to security, not only delivers the updated Internet capabilities but also explains in detail each state’s growth. Utah’s quarter over quarter average connection speed growth was twelve percent and its year over year growth was thirty percent. This increase in speed pushed Utah from sixth to fourth nationally, and ahead of Massachusetts and Rhode Island which experienced between eight and nine percent growth from Q4 to Q1 and are in fifth and six place respectively. In overall peak speeds, Utah ranked sixth at 67.9 Mbps which was a fifty percent increase from 2014 to 2015, and Delaware ranked first at 85.6 Mbps.
The Washington Post also published an article on the Akamai report and included international rankings. According to the Post, Utah now ranks fifteenth in the world for peak broadband speeds. Its closest international competitors on either side of the ranking are Mongolia at 68.9 Mbps and Israel at 67.3 Mbps. The United States’ average peak speed of 53.3 Mbps ranks twenty-second internationally and at the top is Singapore which has peak speeds of 98.5 Mbps.
Though the bulk of the report focused on increased speeds and updated information about broadband adoption throughout the world, Akamai also reported that the number of people using the Internet has doubled to approximately 3.2 billion and that there will likely be three networked devices per capita by 2019 for the world population. In addition, it touched briefly on the decreasing URL address availability under the current IPV4 regulation of the Internet and that companies seeking further presence on the web would likely find greater future success in developing their websites to work with the next iteration of the Internet, IPV6.
Click here to read the Akamai Q1 2015 State of the Internet. It is free to download.