U.S. broadband connections over 10 Mbps have grown 73 percent over the past year, and overall broadband speeds have risen 20 percent. “The number of people who have adopted broadband (measured at anything above 4 Mbps) was 62 percent, which puts the U.S. at No. 12 in the worldwide rankings when it comes to adoption and No. 9 when it comes to average speeds,” reports GigaOM.

“We may not be a gigabit nation yet when it comes to broadband, but the latest data from Akamai shows that the the number of broadband connections over 10 Mbps — what Akamai dubs “high broadband” — has grown by 73 percent from the third quarter of 2011 to the third quarter of 2012,” details the article.

“The fastest countries in the world when measured by average speeds are South Korea and Japan,” notes GigaOM. “South Korea has managed to get over half of its population buying speeds of 10 Mbps or more. The U.S. is more in line with the global average, but has seen a significant boost in ‘high’ broadband adoption.”

The Akamai report highlights the difference between wireless and mobile connections, as only seven mobile carriers provide Akamai’s 4 Mbps definition of broadband.

Google Fiber, Google’s broadband service that deploys broadband speeds up to 100 times faster than typical broadband connections, did not have an impact on the report, as the report analyzed findings in the third quarter of 2012 and Google officially deployed Google Fiber in the fourth quarter.

Additional highlights from the Akamai report: China and the U.S. hold the No. 1 and No. 2 spots, respectively, as origination countries for attack traffic; average mobile connection speeds of three U.S. providers topped out 2.7 Mbps; the average peak connection speed in India has increased 140 percent since 2007, 250 percent in China, and 200 percent in the U.S.