South Korea remained as the top country in the Asia-Pacific Region with fastest Internet average connection speed in the third quarter, 2011, according to a latest report.

The global average connection speed continued to see extremely strong year-on-year growth, increasing 39% from the third quarter of 2010 to 2.7 Mbps, Akamai, a CDN (Content Delivery Network) service provider, said in its quarterly report The State of the Internet released early this month.

Nine of the countries and regions among the top 10 saw average connection speeds grow year-over-year, as did the United States and among the top 100 fastest cities worldwide, cities in Asia continue to dominate the list.

According to the report, South Korea maintains No.1 with the fastest average connection speed of 16.7Mbps. Hong Kong ranked No.2 of 10.5 Mbps, and Japan got the third place with 8.9 Mbps.

The remaining countries and regions surveyed within the Asia-Pacific region fell far below the top three countries and regions, with several clustered in the 3-5 Mbps range, and others clustered in the 0-2 Mbps range.

Although the Chinese mainland showed a highly increase of 43 percent compared to the previous year, its average connection speed was 1.4Mbps, which is below the worldwide average of 2.7Mbps and made it rank only 90 of the overall ranking.

   Chinese mainland

 Average Mbps of Q3, 2011: 1.4

Worldwide ranking: 90 

Quarter-over-quarter change: 21%

Year-on-year change: 43%