U.S. Broadband Sucks, But Less So on the East Coast: Study

• Author: admin
• Filed under: Tech News
• Date: Aug 24,2008

Despite the fact that California, specifically Silicon Valley, is thought to be the heart of technology, it’s the East Coast that rules in terms of broadband speeds, according to a study by affordable-broadband advocacy group Speed Matters. Just to be clear, Speed Matters is an organization backed by the Communication Workers of America (CWA).

The report (.PDF), is the second annual survey by Speed Matters. It just re-emphasizes how far behind the U.S. is compared to other countries in terms of broadband speed.

The results of this second annual survey of Internet speeds show that the United States has not made significant improvement in the speeds at which residents connect to the Internet. Our nation continues to fall far behind other countries.

The median download speed for the nation was 2.3 megabits per second (mbps). In Japan, the median download speed is 63 mbps, or 30 times faster than the U.S.

While not everyone wants broadband, most of us do, and the faster the better. On the other hand, while the U.S. continues to drop behind other countries in terms of speed, U.S. ISPs seem to be moving further and further toward tiered broadband.

In terms of the fastest Internet, however, the top nine states are all on the East Coast. They are:

1. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps)
2. Delaware (6.7Mbps)
3. New Jersey (5.8Mbps)
4. Virginia (5Mbps)
5. Massachusetts (4.6Mbps)
6. New York (4.1Mbps)
7. Florida (4.0Mbps)
8. Maryland (4.0Mbps)
9. Georgia (3.0Mbps)

Wow, look at that drop between 8 and 9. Finally, a West Coast state at #10: Washington. California ranks #25 at 2.5Mbps.

The survey was conducted between May 2007 and May 2008; visitors to the Speed Matters web site were asked to test their connection speed. Nearly 230,000 connections in the United States were tested.

For the East Coast, it’s great that they have fast speeds, but if ISPs decide to all have tiered service, particularly low tiers like Frontier’s 5GB cap, it’ll mean we all just reach the limit that much faster.