In Akamai Technologies’ “State of the Internet” report for Q4 2010 Hong Kong (as a region/country) was identified as the market with the fastest average peak internet connection speed in the world. Hong Kong fixed line users can access the internet with an average peak speed of 37.9Mb/s, ahead of South Korea at 32.3Mb/s, Romania at 31.7Mb/s and Japan at 30.5Mb/s.

As a city, Hong Kong comes in at number 25 in the world in terms of average peak connections, behind 18 Japanese cities, four South Korean cities, and Constanta and Iasi in Romania. The city with the highest average peak connection speed: Kanagawa, a district in the Japanese city of Yokohama, with an average peak connection speed of 48.06Mb/s.

On an average connection basis (as opposed to peak), Hong Kong registered the second fastest connections at 9.4Mb/s, behind South Korea’s 13.7Mb/s, and ahead of Japan at 8.3Mb/s, and Romania and Netherlands, both at 7Mb/s.

According to the report, 56% of Hong Kong users now qualified as high broadband connections, defined by Akamai as any link above 5Mb/s, second only to Japan with 58% of users in this category. For standard broadband or anything above 2Mb/s in Akamai’s terms, 93% of Hong Kong internet users qualified, putting it in third place behind the Isle of Man and Monaco, both at 96%.

Akamai also analysed data gathered from mobile networks. One Hong Kong operator, dubbed HK-1 by Akamai, offered average peak connection speeds of some 13.2Mb/s in Q4 2010, the fastest in Asia and fifth in the world behind individual mobile operators in the UK (21.2Mb/s), Greece (18.7Mb/s), Canada (18Mb/s) and Spain (13.8Mb/s). On average, users on HK-1 were able to access the internet at 2.5Mb/s, nearly twice as fast as the average Thai fixed line connection at 2.7Mb/s. The second Hong Kong mobile operator HK-2 also performed well, registering average connection speeds of 1.8Mb/s, with average peak speeds of 8.2Mb/s.

Perhaps more impressive than coming first in the world in peak access speeds is the fact that Hong Kong actually grew those speeds 47% year-on-year. This figure is likely to rise further as PCCW is swapping out its DSL infrastructure with direct fibre and offering users 100Mb/s at no extra charge to their existing broadband package. At the same time, HKBN continues to expand its own fibre infrastructure, which is already supporting one of the world’s first 1Gb/s consumer offerings.

Hong Kong will also see the first commercial LTE offering in 2011, which will enhance mobile speeds. In addition, a number of new, high-capacity submarine-cable systems are slated to land in the city over the next two years.