Sign in / up

back to article US remains global sluggard in broadband speed rankings

Akamai's latest State or the Internet report shows that the US is making little headway in becoming a top-ranked broadband nation, and is being outpaced by Asia and Europe based on traffic analysis from the first quarter of the year. The US ranked ninth in average measured connection speed which, while a 27 per cent increase, …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Eddy Ito

    "Surprisingly, California didn't even make it into the top 10 states for broadband speeds."

    Having lived in three of the aforementioned places it isn't surprising to me. Consider I went from a fair speed in NH at 5 Down/2 Up Mbps (3,000 people in 46 sq. miles) to RI at 7-8D/3U Mbps (3,500 people in 29 sq. miles) and now finally in the purgatory that is So Cal. at 2-3D/0.2U Mbps (50,000 people in 6 sq. miles) and each costing $49.99/mo. Wireless coverage is better here in SoCal but the speeds aren't worth crowing about. In short, as populations and population densities go up the network gets saturated and there isn't enough money in rolling out more bandwidth for the same price because both of my current choices are satisfied with the status quo. When I dumped one for the other, they didn't even ask why I was dropping them because they don't really care whereas in both NH and RI they were interested if I was switching carriers, moving or if they could provide a less costly option. Simple supply and demand really, when the supply of customers is high and suppliers low there isn't much demand to listen to customer complaints.

    1 0
  2. Mikel

    There is a fix for this.

    "Google Fiber."

    2 2
  3. Dagg Silver badge
    Trollface

    No wonder that California is slow, it is the home to the film and TV industry. The last thing they want is fast internet as it will completely stuff their business model. Just think about all the fast access to content from anywhere in the world free or much cheaper than Hollywood wants to charge you.

    2 1
  4. tempemeaty

    US telco's will never get broadband faster or more reliable

    For those of us who worked for a US telco it's no wonder that they are behind. The managements are abusive bureaucrats. During my time with one the clueless round the clock changes in internal policies and abusive attitude to staff was staggering. Management didn't know what they were doing. I can't imagine US broadband ever getting any better.

    1 1
    1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: US telco's will never get broadband faster or more reliable

      Not a situation limited only to US telcos, sadly.

      0 0
  5. MrT

    Broadband...

    ...used to be >512Kbps - when did it become >4Mbps? Many politicos bluster on about providing fast broadband at 2Mbps or so...

    1 0
  6. Your alien overlord - fear me
    Black Helicopters

    Blame it on the NSA

    They're the bottleneck, slurping everyone's traffic onto their servers

    3 1
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like