Asia leads in Internet data speeds

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NEW YORK, Jan. 31 (UPI) -- When it comes to Internet speeds, Asia sits both at the very top and the very bottom of the rankings, a survey by a U.S. website monitoring firm says.

Pingdom says while the world's fastest Internet connection speeds can be found in Asia, with Hong Kong offering an impressive 54.1 megabits per second, the continent also has the slowest, with Iran clocking in at just 2.9 Mbps.

Of the globe's top five countries in Internet speed, three of them are found in Asia, a Pingdom.com release said Thursday: China (Hong Kong), South Korea and Japan.

The United States ranks 14th, it said.

If entire continents are ranked instead of countries, Europe has the fastest average Internet speeds at 23 Mbps, followed by the Pacific (including Australia and New Zealand), Asia, North America, South America and Africa.

In the third quarter of 2012, the average worldwide Internet speed was 15.9 Mbps, Pingdom said.