The United States places ninth in the world in access to "high broadband connectivity," at 34% of users, including 27% of connections reaching 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps and 7% reaching above 10 Mbps, Akamai says in its latest State of the Internet Report. That's an improvement since a year ago, when the United States was in 12th place with only 24% of users accessing fast connections. But the United States is still dwarfed by South Korea, where 72% of Internet connections are greater than 5 Mbps, and Japan, which is at 60%. Hong Kong and Romania are the only other countries or regions to hit the 50% mark.

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Worldwide, 22% of Internet connections are 5 Mbps or greater, according to Akamai.

The United States ranked even worse in providing connections greater than 2 Mbps. Although 74% of U.S. connections reach this threshold, that's good for only 39th place in the world, out of 200 or so countries and regions. Monaco, Tunisia and the Isle of Man lead the way with at least 95% of users surfing the Web at 2 Mbps speeds.

The U.S. government in April 2009 created the with the goal of "bringing the power and promise of broadband to us all."