Mobile Broadband Faster than Fixed Line?

There is an interesting bit of data in the latest report from Akamai on global Internet usage. The global average fixed-line connection speed was 2.6 Mbps, and the global average peak connection speed was 11.4 Mbps.

Looking at mobile broadband connections, average connection speeds on known mobile providers ranged from 5.3 Mbps down to 209 kbps, while “average” peak connection speeds ranged from 23.4 Mbps down to 1.2 Mbps.



The interesting observation is that wireless broadband has the higher peak speeds, about double that of fixed line connections, with a variable “average” speed that in some cases also is twice as high as fixed-line connections, though such sessions are highly variable. When mobile broadband is slow, it is an order of magnitude slower than fixed line connections. Global broadband speeds