Report gives Virginia high ranking on Internet connection speed

Virginia ranks among the top states for peak average Internet connection speed, according to Akamai Technologies Inc., a content-delivery network services company.

Akamai’s first quarter “2015 State of the Internet” report found that the average peak connection speed for Virginia was 79 Mbps, (megabits per second), placing the commonwealth third  behind Delaware at 85.6 Mbps and the District of Columbia at 79.2 Mbps.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai considers the average peak connection speed to be the best measure of Internet capacity.

Trailing Virginia among the top 10 states were Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Utah, North Dakota, Washington state, Maryland and California.

The Akamai report found that Virginia’s connection speed during the first quarter had improved 7.5 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2014 and 47 percent over a 12-month period.

Delaware’s connection speed had improved 14 percent quarter to quarter and 65 percent year to year.

Worldwide, Virginia has the fifth-fastest peak broadband speed by region. Ahead of Virginia, in addition to Delaware and District of Columbia, were Singapore and Hong Kong.

Singapore’s speed was 98.5 Mbps while Hong Kong’s was 92.6 Mbps.