Today, Speed Matters released the third annual report on Internet Speeds in America – and U.S. connection speeds have not improved significantly in the past year. The results of the report are based on the last-mile connection speed of over 413,000 Internet users who took the online test between May 2008 and May 2009.
The state of broadband adoption and deployment in the United States is poor, according to the report:
Only 20 percent of those who took the test have Internet speeds in the range of the top-ranked countries – South Korea, Japan and Sweden. 18 percent do not even meet the FCC definition for current-generation broadband: an always-on Internet connection of at least 768 kbps downstream.
Not only does the United States rank 15th in the industrialized world in Internet speed, it is virtually the only industrialized country without a national high-speed Internet policy. CWA says the government invests relatively less on telecommunications than most other major countries. Consumers are charged more for slower speeds, and current high-speed networks don’t even reach millions of American households.
Job creation, rural development, telemedicine, distance learning, even solutions to global warming all rely on truly high-speed universal networks. This year, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act set out to change that by calling for a national broadband plan by spring 2010 and providing $7.2 billion in broadband grants for unserved and underserved areas. The FCC is hard at work on the national broadband plan.
The data also confirms that where a customer lives is a good indicator of Internet connection speed. With some exceptions, if you live in a Northeastern or Mid-Atlantic state, you are likely to have good high-speed Internet options.
You can find out your connection speed and contribute to the data collection for next year’s report by clicking the button on the right.
See the full list of 2009 state rankings and a comparison to the average download and upload speed in 2008.
Read the Full Report.
