About half of the countries in the Middle East and Africa posted connectivity gains in the second quarter, with average Internet speeds growing anywhere from 2 per cent in Saudi Arabia to a robust 64 per cent in Egypt, a report said.

Meanwhile, global average connection speed decreased 2.3 per cent from the first quarter of 2016 to 6.1 Mbps, a 14 per cent increase year over year, said the  2016 State of the Internet Report released by Akamai Technologies, a global leader in content delivery network (CDN) services.

According to the World Bank, enhanced connectivity has been linked to increases in national productivity, competitiveness, and the ability to attract foreign direct investment.

“The continued increase in average connection speeds is a reassuring trend and we have seen a number of announcements in the region that bode well for further improving Internet connectivity between the MEA region and the rest of the world, including the landing of new high-capacity submarine cables in the region,” said David Belson, editor of Akamai’s State of the Internet Report.

“However, recent Internet disruptions caused by everything from government-ordered blackouts to a lone monkey sparking a widespread outage are reminders of the many factors that can affect access to and use of the Internet that is so often taken for granted.”

Highlights from the report:

•    All countries surveyed in MEA saw positive year-over-year changes in average connection speeds, with Kenya having again the largest jump (297 per cent).  Egypt and Qatar both more than doubled their average speeds compared with one year prior, while eight countries in the MEA region posted double-digit yearly gains.

•    Global average peak connection speed increased 3.7 per cent to 36.0 Mbps in the second quarter, rising 2.5 per cent year over year.

•    Qatar led the Middle East in average peak connection speeds, and was ranked fifth globally, with a 9.6 per cent quarterly increase to 97.8 Mbps, while the UAE ranked 25th on the global scale with 9.1 per cent quarterly increase to 66.1 Mbps.

•    Nine of the surveyed MEA countries saw higher average peak connection speeds in the second quarter compared with the first.

IPv4 and IPv6

•    The number of unique IPv4 addresses connecting to the Akamai Intelligent Platform was just over 800 million, which is 1 per cent less than the first quarter of 2016.

•    Belgium remained the clear global leader in IPv6 adoption with 38 per cent of its connections to Akamai occurring over IPv6, up 5.1 per cent from the previous quarter.

•    Among the MEA countries, Saudi Arabia ranked 34th globally with a 1.2 per cent adoption rate.

Mobile

•    Average mobile connection speeds ranged from a high of 23.1 Mbps in the UK to a low of 2.2 Mbps in Venezuela. Among the Middle Eastern countries, the UAE recorded the highest average mobile connection speed (8.4 Mbps). – TradeArabia News Service