There are lots of Ultra HD TVs in stores, but still not much content to enjoy. Internet streaming will be one of the primary ways to get 4K, but is the internet infrastructure actually ready? Akamai knows and has shared its data.

Are you ready for 4K streaming?
Akamai is a CDN (content delivery network) and is responsible for moving lots of traffic around the internet. Several streaming services have used them, including Netflix. Based on their knowledge, they have taken a look at which countries are ready for 4K streaming.

Akamai defines an internet connection as “4K ready” when the download pipe is faster than 15 Mb/s. As you can see in the table below, South Korea is leading the pack. 60% of the households with an internet connection are ready to stream in 4K.


Japan is second and Hong Kong third, and the rest of the list is dominated by European countries. In contrast, India and China have readiness rats of just 0.3% and 0.2%.

But where is USA? Well, Akamai says that 39 states have 4K readiness levels of 10% or more. In Massachusetts 27% are ready to stream in 4K, and most states have seen significant year-on-year improvements.

Netflix is currently one of the only streaming services to offer 4K content. They use a 15.6 Mb/s bitrate with HEVC compression, but have plans to add high-frame rate content in the future, which could increase the bitrate further.

If you want to read the full report, you can find it here.