The latest "State of the Internet" report by internet cloud services provider Akamai has revealed that the Netherlands has the fastest internet connection speed in Europe.

It is also the fourth fastest globally, coming behind world leader South Korea, then Japan and Hong Kong.

This is an improvement on last year, when it was rated as having the sixth-fastest internet connection in the world.

Faster internet in the Netherlands

The Netherlands' higher position is due to a strong 23 per cent quarter-over-quarter increase in its internet connection speed.

The improvement means that the Netherlands has overtaken previous fastest country Switzerland and is well ahead of other fast countries such as the Czech Republic, Latvia and the United States.

Both the Netherlands and Switzerland maintained average connection speeds last quarter above the 10Mbps "high broadband" threshold (at 12,5 and 11,6 average Mbps respectively), joined in third place by the Czech Republic (with 11,3 Mbps).

The Netherlands has also had extremely high year-on-year growth in high broadband connectivity: 106 per cent.

With 44 per cent of its high broadband connections above 10 Mbps, the Netherlands is number three in the world in this area.

This puts it just behind Japan with 49 per cent and, like everyone else, well behind South Korea, which has 70 per cent of its connections faster than 10 Mbps. The global average is 19 per cent.

Naturally, the Netherlands also does well at slower speeds, with 87 per cent of its connections greater than 4 Mbps.

The Netherlands does not rate so highly for average peak connection speed, however, being placed ninth, but speed here did increase slightly in contrast to the decrease in the global average.

Global internet connection speeds

The average connection speed continues to increase all over the world, growing 10 per cent quarter-over-quarter to 3,6 Mbps.

This was driven by large quarter-over-quarter changes in many counties, including perennial "speed leader" South Korea, which had an enormous 66 per cent quarterly increase in average connections speed, growing to 22,1 Mbps.

The Netherlands had the next highest quarterly growth in the global top ten, followed by six other countries with quarterly increases of around 10 per cent.

Top 10 Average Connection Speeds

For more details, read the full report.

Source: Akamai