According to Akamai's Q3 State of the Internet report, the United States' Internet speed did not qualify for a place in the top 10 list of countries with the fastest Internet in the world, and its average overall speed has actually decreased by 2.4% year-over-year from 2008 to 2009.

The United States actually ranked 18 out of the 203 nations tested in terms of average connection speeds, falling behind speed leaders like South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong.

When looked at from a global perspective, the results are quite positive. The report states:

"The global average connection speed is once again increasing, after an unusual drop in the second quarter. The average connection speed of 1.7 Mbps returns it to a level consistent with the first quarter of 2009. South Korea maintained its position as the country with the highest average connection speed, and was joined by Ireland as one of two countries in the top 10 posting quarterly gains of greater than 25% (on top of minor quarterly gains also seen in the second quarter). Romania, Sweden, and the Czech Republic all saw quarterly declines in their average connection speeds, though they all maintained positive yearly growth. While the United States saw a small quarterly gain in average connection speeds, increasing to 3.9 Mbps, from a year-over-year perspective, the trend is negative, though just slightly so."

If you live in Delaware, Massachusetts, the District of Columbia or Utah you can be quite pleased with your region's Q3 performance as they each increased upwards of 15% in average connection speed from Q2 measurements.

In case you're unfamiliar with Akamai, the company serves as a distributed computing platform for companies worldwide. Its quarterly State of the Internet report analyzes data gathered from its global server network and covers security, Internet penetration, mobile Internet, average connection speeds and broadband connectivity.

[via Gizmodo]