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,

Continue reading Internet Connection Slow? Speed Matters.