Got a Need for Speed? The Country With the Fastest Internet in the World is Revealed

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South Korea has, by far, the fastest broadband internet speeds in the world. (Photo: BI Intelligence)

American carriers may call their Internet high-speed, but it’s glacial compared to other countries around the world.

Akamai, a cloud services provider, released their State of the Internet Report” with stats from data gathered during the first three months of 2014. It ranks the fastest speeds around the globe, and shockingly, the United States fails to impress.

According Akamai, South Korea offers the fastest broadband in the world, with average speeds of 24.6 megabits (mbps) per second. That performance more than doubles speeds in the United States, which limped in at an unimpressive 11.4 mpbs — putting it in 14th place overall.

Faster broadband means faster downloads. (Photo: Thinkstock)

Rounding out the top three are Hong Kong at 15.7 mbps, and tied for third were Switzerland and Japan at 14.9 mbps.

Broadband commonly refers to high-speed internet access that is transmitted by a cable modem, satellite, or wireless.

But there is a small blip of good news in this story. While the U.S. doesn’t offer the fastest broadband in the world, it does continue to grow. The United States broadband adoption rate, or the percentage of households using broadband, increased by 10 percent in the quarter. This means that more people have access to high-speed internet, so that’s something.

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