akamai

Sometimes, telecoms lobbyists can't help telling the truth

18 June 2017 by Steve Blum
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When I see a headline like "Broadband speeds have soared under net neutrality rules, cable lobby says", I gotta click on it. So I did and landed on an article by Jon Brodkin on Ars Technica.

There’s no Damascene conversion involved, though. What Brodkin is highlighting is how cable lobbyists, such as the National Cable Television Association (or whatever they say the acronym stands for these days), brag about faster Internet speeds, while at the same time bemoaning the infrastructure investment apocalypse that must surely follow the FCC’s 2015 decision to regulate broadband as a common carrier service…

As we can see, the NCTA has flexible messaging and applies conflicting arguments to different situations.

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U.S. broadband speeds climb, but gap between fast and slow persists

17 June 2017 by Steve Blum
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Ninety percent of connections made to Akamai’s content delivery network by users in the United States were at the 4 Mbps level or better in the first quarter of this year, a five percent increase from a year ago. That indicates that consumers continue to migrate away from the lowest speed service, when they can.

Take up of faster speed levels, though, is growing relatively quickly but still represents only a fraction of the U.S. market.… More

California's broadband speeds rank second among its peers

7 December 2016 by Steve Blum
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Where it really counts, California’s broadband speeds come out on top, or nearly so. We’re the sixth largest economy in the world, and our average broadband speeds rank second, 1 Mbps behind Japan. According to the Akamai State of the Internet report for April through June of 2016, the average Internet user in Japan connected to its content delivery network at 17.1 Mbps, while the average Californian connected at 16.1 Mbps.

Average connection speeds in Japan slowed a bit in the second quarter, from a high of 18.2 Mbps, as did California’s average, which was 16.4 Mbps in the first quarter of 2016.… More

Broadband hits a speed bump in California

29 November 2016 by Steve Blum
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Internet connection speeds took a dip in California during the second quarter of this year. The Akamai State of the Internet report for April through June of 2016 shows the average connection speed from users in California to its content delivery network dropped to 16.1 Mbps, from 16.4 Mbps in the first quarter of the year. On the other hand, connection speeds are still rising on a year over year basis – the average speed in California was 14.0 Mbps in the second quarter of 2015.… More

Rapid climb in California's broadband speeds and use

4 September 2016 by Steve Blum
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The average speed at which Californians connected to Akamai’s content delivery network in the first quarter of 2016 was 16.4 Mbps, according to Akamai’s State of the Internet Report for the first quarter of 2016. Despite lagging behind U.S. leaders, that’s stilll a healthy jump from a year earlier, when the average was 13.6 Mbps, and a huge improvement over the 5.7 Mbps we were clocking five years ago – a 188% improvement.

The average Californian can and does buy faster Internet service plans as well.… More

California's broadband speeds get average marks from Akamai

24 July 2016 by Steve Blum
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Internet connection speeds in California are better than the national average, but not by much and not by enough to be amongst the leaders. According to Akamai’s State of the Internet Report for the first quarter of 2016, the average speed at which Californians connected to its content distribution network was 16.4 Mbps. That compares favorably to the U.S. average of 15.3 Mbps, but it is well behind the leader, Delaware, which averaged 21.2 Mbps.… More

California broadband improves but still falls short of excellence

26 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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Average Internet speeds continue to rise in California and across the U.S. Akamai’s quarterly State of the Internet report shows the average Internet connection from Californian users to its content distribution network servers at 15.3 Mbps in the fourth quarter of 2015. That’s a 22% increase from a year before, and more than double – 107% – from three years before, when the average California connection clocked in at a mere 7.4%. Other states saw similar improvements…

In the fourth quarter, average connection speeds among the top 10 states continued the momentum from the third quarter with robust increases seen across the board…All 10 states had average connection speeds meeting the 15 Mbps threshold — up from 8 in the previous quarter—but none had average connection speeds reaching the FCC’s new 25 Mbps broadband threshold.

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There's more network traffic at 4K levels, but can growth be sustained?

27 September 2015 by Steve Blum
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Home field advantage.

The prospects for widespread adoption of 4K television technology and programming – often referred to as ultra high definition – are slowly getting better in the U.S. According to Akamai, which just released its State of the Internet report for the second quarter of 2015, about a fifth – 21% – of U.S.-based users on its network are running at 15 Mbps or better, which ranks 18th best in the world. That’s the minimum service level needed to stream 4K programming.… More

From a global perspective, California's Internet speeds are pretty damn good

25 September 2015 by Steve Blum
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California has the 11th fastest average Internet speed in the world, according to the latest Akamai State of the Internet report, which looked at Internet traffic over its content delivery network during the second quarter of 2015. Clocking in at 13.7 Mbps, the Californian average is ahead of the U.S., which finished 18th overall with 11.7 Mbps, but behind several European countries – Sweden (16.1 Mbps), Switzerland (15.6 Mbps), Netherlands (15.2 Mbps), Norway (14.3 Mbps), Latvia (14.2 Mbps), Finland (14.0 Mbps) and the Czech Republic (13.9 Mbps) are fourth through tenth – and way behind the top three finishers, South Korea (23.1 Mbps), Hong Kong (17.0 Mbps) and Japan (16.4 Mbps).… More

U.S. supreme court sticks to the strict meaning of patent infringement

There’s good news in the U.S. supreme court’s unanimous decision this week to toss out a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Akamai against a competing content delivery network, Limelight.

The court declined to open a vast new frontier for patent troll claims. Akamai, of course, isn’t a troll – it uses its patented technology to good effect – but it was trying to make the case that a partial (and thus, under law, allowable) duplication of a method it developed was actually an infringement because Limelight told customers how to complete the missing steps themselves.… More