Anyone pitying diminutive Delaware might want to think again — small though it may be, it’s got the fastest average Internet connection speeds in the entire United States of America. That’s what we call bragging rights, everyone.

While one might think states with huge metropolitan areas or high-tech businesses might be operating at super fast Internet speeds, Internet provider Akamai’s quarterly State of the Internet study says that just isn’t the case. After all, the more people concentrated in an area fighting for Internet, the easier it gets bogged down.

At 10.2 megabits per second in the first three months of 2012, itty-bitty Delaware had speeds of about 9% faster than the second-place finisher of New Hampshire. It seems this isn’t a surprise to Akamai, as Delaware is usually a strong performer, partially because of the simple  fact that it is so very small (have we mentioned its size yet?).

“One key reason is that it’s fairly small state, which likely makes it easier to bring higher speed connectivity to a larger percentage of the population, said the director of market intelligence at Akamai.

The others in the top five include Vermont, Utah and Rhode Island, while the slowest in the nation is Arkansas, with an average connection speed of 3.6 Mbps.

If your connection is aggravatingly sluggish, take heart — average speeds are getting faster, as each state upped its speed by at least 9% compared with the fourth quarter of 2011.

The state with the fastest Internet is… [CNNMoney]

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