Global Web speeds continued their steady growth this year, climbing 1.8 percent in the first quarter to reach an average connection speed of 3.9 Mbps.

According to a report from Akamai, that number will eclipse the 4 Mbps threshold next quarter, thanks in part to increased speeds in nine of the top 10 countries.

South Korea's 8 percent jump to 23.6 Mbps secured its first-place position9 Mbps ahead of Japan in second place with 14.6 Mbps. Of the top 10 countries, Akamai said, only the Czech Republic experienced a decrease in average connection speed.

The U.S. was not in the top 10 list, which also included Hong Kong, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Latvia, Sweden, Finland, and Ireland.

"While there continues to be room for improvement in high broadband adoption and average peak connection speeds in some areas of the world, the trends we're seeing remain very positive," Akamai editor David Belson said in a statement.

Year over year, most countries continue taking positive steps: Average global connection speeds grew by 24 percent in the last quarter, and have increased 13 percent since the same time in 2013.

"Steady year-over-year growth suggests that a strong, global foundation is being built for the enjoyment of next-generation content and services like 4K video and increasingly connected homes and offices," Belson said. "And that connectivity will continue to evolve to support the growing demands these emerging technologies will place on the Internet."

Among those emerging technologies is 4K, or Ultra HD, which generally requires 10 to 20 Mbps of bandwidth to stream every pore on a television actor's face. Not everyone is ready for such detailed displays, though: only 11 percent of global connections run at speeds of 15 Mbps or higher, including South Korea and Japan.

The report comes shortly after an FCC report found that most U.S. ISPs are providing advertised speed, though they need work on consistency.

The firm's 2014 State of the Internet report also covers Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack traffic, which, in the past few weeks, seems to be hogging the headlines. But in the first quarter of the year, most areas of the world actually saw a decline in DDoS attacks.

North and South America continued to account for most of the incidents (49 percent), ahead of the Asia Pacific region (31 percent) and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), which made up only 20 percent of DDoS traffic.

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