In its quarterly State of the Internet report, Akamai notes that we have now passed average worldwide connection speeds of 4 megabits per second, as Internet speeds continue to be impacted by the growth of cellular networks and affordable smartphones and tablets. While this number may not seem like big news in the U.S., it is a significant milestone in many other parts of the world. The report also indicates that distributed denial of service attacks are down by 15 percent compared to the previous year.

“Connection speeds are not only growing, but they are accelerating: as a point of comparison, it was only a year ago that just half the world’s Internet connections were exceeding 4Mbps,” notes TechCrunch. “In the last quarter they have gone up by 21 percent and are now at 4.6Mbps, working out to a year-on-year rise of over 40 percent.”

Other key takeaways from the Akamai report:

• South Korea is the world’s fastest country in terms of mobile broadband, with an average mobile connection speed of 15.2Mbps.
• Australia holds the lead for peak connections on mobile at 108Mbps.
• Android-based phones are in first place in terms of device sales, but iOS is on top when it comes to using the most data services.
• Apple’s default browser, Mobile Safari, is currently the most popular browser when looking across cellular and non-cellular networks.

In related news, BT announced that it has successfully delivered broadband download speeds of nearly 800Mbps using fiber and copper during its recent UK field trials of G.fast technology. The ultrafast speeds achieved over fiber to the curb and copper to the home could mean a major upgrade to DSL users.

“The technology delivers data over fiber from the British telecom’s facilities to neighborhoods while using copper for the final meters,” explains Ars Technica. “Deployments of this sort are less expensive than fiber-to-the-home because they reuse existing copper lines used for telephone service and DSL.”

The trials suggest that the tech may not be far from commercial deployment. AT&T has deployed fiber-to-the-node service in the U.S. that tops out at 45Mbps, and is beginning deployments of fiber-to-the-home in limited areas for faster service.