European cities make progress in Akamai broadband league

Cities in Asia continue to dominate CDN provider Akamai’s list of the 100 fastest broadband cities worldwide, according to its latest State of the Internet report.

Based on analysis of the second quarter of this year, Brno in the Czech Republic was the fastest European city, ranked 55 out of 100 globally with an average connection speed of 8.3Mbps. Within Europe, Brno was followed by Geneva with 8.2Mbps and Riga with 8.1Mbps.

Average connection speeds across Europe’s top 10 cities were well above Akamai’s 5Mbps ‘high broadband’ threshold. Taking the top spot in high broadband adoption was the Netherlands, which now boasts 68% of its connections to Akamai above 5Mbps, with a 22% quarterly increase. In the second quarter of 2011 six European countries had more than half their connections to Akamai at speeds of 5Mbps or above. More than half the connections of all European countries listed were at speeds of 2Mbps or over. The UK came 25th in the European league, with 30% of connections above 5Mbps.