The fastest average broadband internet speed (in the world) has been identified at Berkeley, a city located east of San Francisco Bay Area. Akamai Technologies, a company which provides “distributed computing platform for global Internet content” and also collects internet data speeds across various cities world-wide, revealed this report recently. Berkeley topped the list with 18.7Mbps broadband speed, trailed by Chapel Hill in North Carolina with 17.5Mbps and closely followed by the Silicon Valley nerve center, Stanford, with average speeds up to 17 Mbps. The next four places are dominated by cities in Japan and South Korea.

Obviously, it is clear that cities which have a significant presence in research and technology are the ones in the list. University of California at Berkeley, Duke U./UNC at Chapel Hill in North Carolina and Stanford University in Stanford (duh!) are the reasons behind the top three. Moral of the story: The next time you are buying a home, make sure it is close to a University town. It might help!

[source: akamai.com via arstechnica.com]