• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, December 18, 2015

Broadband speeds throughout the world are increasing, but no country yet offers average connections of at least 25 Mbps -- the Federal Communications Commission's new definition of "broadband."

That's according to Akamai's third-quarter state of the Internet report, released this week. The average connection speed in the U.S. increased in the third quarter to 12.6 Mbps, according to the report. Last year at the same time, average U.S. broadband connections were around 11.5 Mbps.

Overall, Web speeds increased year-over-year in all areas of the country except Connecticut and the state of Washington. Residents of the District of Columbia saw the fastest average connections (19.5 Mbps). Other states in the top five were Delaware (18.5 Mbps), Utah (16.2 Mbps), Massachusetts (16.2 Mbps) and Rhode Island (15.7 Mbps).

Akamai also reported that 24% of the country now has Web connections of at least 15 Mbps, while 46% have Web connections of at least 10 Mbps and 80% connects at speeds of at least 4 Mbps (the FCC's former definition of broadband).

While those figures reflect an improvement, broadband speeds in the U.S. still lag significantly behind several other countries. Residents of Singapore surf the Web at average speeds of 20.5 Mbps -- the fastest in the world. Rounding out the top five are Sweden (17.4 Mbps), Norway (16.4 Mbps), Switzerland (16.2 Mbps) and Hong Kong (15.8 Mbps).

Worldwide, only around 5% of Web-surfers have connections of at least 25 Mbps.