Vietnam’s Internet connection speed among Asia-Pacific’s lowest: report

Students are seen accessing the Internet with their laptops at a university in Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam ranks almost at the bottom among countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific region when it comes to Internet connection speed, a cloud service provider said in a report earlier this month.

The average connection speed in Vietnam was only higher than the Philippines and India in the third quarter of last year, Akamai Technologies, Inc. said in its Third Quarter, 2014 State of the Internet Report, released on January 8.

The Internet speed in Vietnam dropped 12 percent from a quarter earlier to 2.5 Mbps. The figure, however, was a 22 percent increase compared to Q3/2013, according to Akamai.

Mbps, short for megabits per second, is a measure of data transfer speed generally used to measure network transmission. A megabit is equal to one million bits.

South Korea took the top spot in the global rankings, with an average connection speed of 25.3 Mbps, up 2.7 percent quarter on quarter and 14 percent year on year.

It was followed by Hong Kong (16.3 Mbps) and Japan (15 Mbps).

India bottomed out the Asia-Pacific list, and was 115th out of 129 on the global one, with a modest connection speed of 2 Mbps.
Vietnam stood at 101st in the global rankings.

On the global scale, the average connection speed remained above 4 Mbps, which is considered the threshold for “broadband” connection, for the second consecutive quarter.

However, it saw a slight decline in the third quarter of 2014, dropping 2.8 percent to 4.5 Mbps, the Massachusetts-based company said in the report.

Six of the top ten countries and territories saw increases in global average connection speeds, and all of the top ten remained well above the 10 Mbps “high broadband” threshold.

The report also details the average peak connection speed in the countries and territories, with the global figure declining 2.3 percent from the second quarter to 24.8 Mbps in the third quarter of last year.

Hong Kong once again had the highest average peak connection speed at 84.6 Mbps, followed closely by Singapore, 83 Mbps.

Vietnam and India shared the last two notches in the Asia-Pacific region, with the former’s average peak connection speed standing at 16.6 Mbps, and the latter, 13.9 Mbps.

The Southeast Asian country stood at 100th place in the global rankings, while India landed at the 113th position.

The report also examines the percentage of connections to Akamai from mobile network providers at “high broadband” speeds, or those that are more than 10 Mbps.

In the third quarter, Sweden moved ahead of Denmark for the top position at an adoption rate of 94 percent, whereas Iran, Paraguay, Croatia, and Vietnam all had mobile broadband adoption rates below one percent, according to the report.

The rate in Vietnam was only 0.3 percent.

The quarterly State of the Internet Report provides insights into key global statistics such as connection speeds and broadband adoption across fixed and mobile networks, overall attack traffic, global 4K readiness, and IPv4 exhaustion and IPv6 implementation, according to Akamai.

Akamai is the leading provider of cloud services for delivering, optimizing and securing online content and business applications, according to its website.

Internet connection in Vietnam has been hit by a rupture in the AAG (Asia Gateway Pacific) underwater cable system since January 5.
The operator of the cable system said Monday the cut will be fixed on January 24, one day later than previously announced.

The first welding joint was completed on Saturday and the last one is slated for completion on January 22, according to the AAG operator.

The welding task is expected to finish at 11:16 am on January 24, enabling Internet connectivity in Vietnam to return to 100 percent.

Source : http://tuoitrenews.vn/