MONTEVIDEO – Uruguay regained its crown from Chile as the Latin American nation with the fastest average broadband download speeds in first quarter of year 2017, according to Akamai’s State of the Q1 Internet report.
The list is based on the quarterly fixed connection speeds monitored by Akamai’s Intelligent Platform, but the study also measures IPv4 and IPv6 migration and mobile broadband speeds as well.
Uruguay registered speeds of 9.5Mbps, just surpassing Chile’s 9.3Mbps. Uruguay saw a 14% increase in speeds from 4Q16, while Chile’s speeds rose only 8.1% qoq. In 4Q16, Chile posted the fastest speeds at 8.5Mbps.
Overall 12 surveyed Americas countries saw increases qoq and three saw declines: Venezuela (-5.7% to 1.8Mbps); Ecuador (-2.9% to 6.2Mbps) and Paraguay (-3.6% to 1.4Mbps).
On a yearly basis, most countries saw growth in average connection speeds apart from Paraguay and Venezuela, which saw -36% and -4.2% declines. Increases ranged from 6.7% in Costa Rica and a whopping 51% in Brazil.
Twelve of the surveyed Americas countries had speeds at or above 4Mbps, up from 11 in 4Q16, as Costa Rica pushed above the threshold for the first time.
In terms of average speeds Chile was followed by Mexico (7.5Mbps), Brazil (6.8 Mbps) and Argentina 6.3%, while Paraguay languished at the bottom with 1.8Mbps.
The country with the fastest average broadband speeds in the Americas was the U.S. with 18.7Mbps with Canada just 2.5Mbps behind.
In terms of mobile data, Peru registered download speeds of 8.3Mbps followed by Paraguay and Mexico with 7.5Mbps each, Chile (7.2Mbps), Colombia (6.7Mbps) and Brazil (5.2Mbps) while Venezuela was bottom with 2.8Mbps.
