U.S. Slips In Internet Connection Ranking Again

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Not only does the U.S. have slower internet speeds than other countries, we also pay more for less! We're number nine! We're number nine!

The U.S. dropped one place from the previous quarter, to ninth overall, at 8.6 megabits per second. Sweden now takes eighth place with an average connection speed of 8.9 megabits per second (mobile networks were not included).
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I'm surprised we only dropped one place. Ofc, I'm lucky-I have a 20/2 cable mobem ISP.
 
Canada didn't even made the top 10...I should be the one complaining! :)
 
While I am not at all surprised that the US keep slipping when it comes to internet rankings, I am incredibly surprised that Vermont has the fastest average connection in the nation. There are several telecoms rolling out gigabit internet though, and with so few people in the state that is probably heavily skewing that data.
 
Somehow this doesn't surprise me. I'll just be happy with my 20/5 FiOS connection for now.
 
I'm on 50/5 with Comcast for $75/month. When they first upgraded it to 50Mb, it really didn't give me any actual difference during peak times, but that changed about 2 months later. Things have improved, just not as much as I would prefer.
 
The people who need good internet, have it.

Most major metropolitan areas have up to 100Mbps available via fiber or cable, if not at least ~25Mbps via something like VDSL (UVerse, etc). The "fastest" country, South Korea, has an average of only 14.2Mbps.... not exactly "fast".

The US has a lot of extremely rural areas where it's not economical to provide high-speed broadband. Living out in the middle of nowhere is a choice that comes with certain drawbacks, and lack of good internet is one of them. I really resent that these areas count so negatively toward our average, giving results that end up being extremely misleading.
 
These internet ratings are interesting but need to be looked at with some perspective as well.

The US at #9 is almost 3.8 million square miles while the total area of 1 through 8 is about 444k square miles. When you start taking land area into account the US does very well. Average 1 through 8 together and you get an Average speed of 10.6 while the US is 8.6 while covering an area 8.5 times that of 1-8 together. I would read this as the US being surprisingly good at wide spread high speed internet availability.
 
lRaphl said:
Canada didn't even made the top 10...I should be the one complaining! :)
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California didn't even make it in the top 10 US states. I think that helps to give one a sense of how misleading these figures are. Our internet is fast enough to support the tech capital of the world (silicon valley), so obviously it's not that slow... I guess the millions of Hispanic laborers that populate the farmland in the central valley (one of the most productive agricultural regions in the entire world) of California aren't big on broadband internet.
 
griffinhart said:
These internet ratings are interesting but need to be looked at with some perspective as well.

The US at #9 is almost 3.8 million square miles while the total area of 1 through 8 is about 444k square miles. When you start taking land area into account the US does very well. Average 1 through 8 together and you get an Average speed of 10.6 while the US is 8.6 while covering an area 8.5 times that of 1-8 together. I would read this as the US being surprisingly good at wide spread high speed internet availability.
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Exactly ... it is much easier to implement high speed internet though out your country if you are small ... many of these countries also have large numbers of people clustered in large urban centers ... the USA has many large urban centers as well as large rural populations ... given our size and infrastructure limitations we are doing very well I think ;)
 
griffinhart said:
These internet ratings are interesting but need to be looked at with some perspective as well.

The US at #9 is almost 3.8 million square miles while the total area of 1 through 8 is about 444k square miles. When you start taking land area into account the US does very well. Average 1 through 8 together and you get an Average speed of 10.6 while the US is 8.6 while covering an area 8.5 times that of 1-8 together. I would read this as the US being surprisingly good at wide spread high speed internet availability.
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Actually when you start taking into account land area US does VERY poorly. Once you leave large (and dense) cities/towns you NEVER see an 8megabit ISP for love or money...you're lucky to see 3-6megabit. Most only see dialup.

Pull out a county map of the USA, and what you'll see is the supermajority of the USA by area doesn't get 8 megabit service, only the population centers. It is only thanks to projects like FiOS and Google Fiber that our ranking is as inflated as it is.
 
Skripka said:
Pull out a county map of the USA, and what you'll see is the supermajority of the USA by area doesn't get 8 megabit service, only the population centers. It is only thanks to projects like FiOS and Google Fiber that our ranking is as inflated as it is.
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"by area" You're doing it wrong.

And let's be clear here, by "population centers" you could mean as far as 100+ miles from a traditional city center and still find suburbs with great internet. Obviously once you venture off into the sticks, things change.
 
Steve said:
Not only does the U.S. have slower internet speeds than other countries, we also pay more for less! We're number nine! We're number nine!
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Wait wait... isn't the free market supposed to alleviate that specific problem? :rolleyes:

And your remark applies to healthcare as well.

When nobody gives a crap - ie not enough money to be made - that's what you get.
 
GotNoRice said:
"by area" You're doing it wrong.

And let's be clear here, by "population centers" you could mean as far as 100+ miles from a traditional city center and still find suburbs with great internet. Obviously once you venture off into the sticks, things change.
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What you seem not to understand is that most of the USA landmass by area is "the sticks". If you randomly pick a county in the USA, odds are quite high the only ISP you'll be able to get is either dial-up, laggy expensive satellite, or if you are insanely lucky sub 3-megabit DSL.

Saying "we're doing quite well" is pretty damn funny since most people in the USA do not have access to the USA "average" this study cites.
 
Central Toronto, Canada. 25/10 Cable via TSI. Costs me exactly $44/mth, no contract. I am extremely happy with price/performance.
 
The size of the US is a poor excuse since most of the US population is concentrated in relatively small areas. 90% of us should have South Korean like speeds if things were done right.
 
Skripka said:
What you seem not to understand is that most of the USA landmass by area is "the sticks". If you randomly pick a county in the USA, odds are quite high the only ISP you'll be able to get is either dial-up, laggy expensive satellite, or if you are insanely lucky sub 3-megabit DSL.
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Yeah we get it - lots of counties in the US with small populations.

What you don't seem to understand is, that's not where most people live...

If you randomly pick a person in the US, chances are they do NOT live in the sticks, and will be able to get fantastic internet.

Saying "we're doing quite well" is pretty damn funny since most people in the USA do not have access to the USA "average" this study cites.
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Care to substantiate that with even a tiny bit of fact? Are you aware of where the majority of the people in the US live? I'll give you a hint, it's not in the sticks...
 
aShrubbery! said:
Wait wait... isn't the free market supposed to alleviate that specific problem? :rolleyes:

And your remark applies to healthcare as well.

When nobody gives a crap - ie not enough money to be made - that's what you get.
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No, the problem is that local government makes deals with the different companies so that nothing else is allowed in.

That way they can charge whatever they like for whatever crap service they already have the infrastructure for.

If these government mandated monopolies did not exists, we would have much faster speeds at lower prices.
 
The US doesn't have the population density of most countries, and if we can keep out the illegal aliens that have four kids a piece and eventually bring over all their aunts and uncles, hopefully we can keep it that way.

And checking regions I'm sure that makes the stats make more sense. If you're out in the badlands with the great canyon as the view from the back of your trailer, chances are you aren't going to have fiber.
 
Skripka said:
Actually when you start taking into account land area US does VERY poorly. Once you leave large (and dense) cities/towns you NEVER see an 8megabit ISP for love or money...you're lucky to see 3-6megabit. Most only see dialup.

Pull out a county map of the USA, and what you'll see is the supermajority of the USA by area doesn't get 8 megabit service, only the population centers. It is only thanks to projects like FiOS and Google Fiber that our ranking is as inflated as it is.
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Yes, but how do other countries with super rural area's fair in relation to the US? It's fine to pull out these rankings, but one thing that limits high speed internet access is the wide spread nature of the extremely rural area's of the country. The larger the area needed to be covered the worse it gets. That's why Texas is fairly low on the rankings vs Vermont. Vermont is extremely rural but has much less area to cover. They also happen to be the highest average speed in the US.

With the exception of Latvia and Sweden, the US has a drastically lower population density than the countries that are doing better. Still Latvia is a lower raking than Utah even with a smaller area to cover and both with populations around 2.5 million.

The news isn't that the US sucks, the news is that finally other countries are catching up.

I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement. There is. But it's the cost and technology slowing us down. With higher speed cell networks, however, we should start to see more and more improvements to those really rural areas where laying cable is just prohibitively expensive.

Please, point out other countries that have large rural areas that are doing better than the US. Australia average around 4.6, Canada at 7.8, Most of Europe under 8mbs with France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece all at 5mb or under...
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Population_density said:
As of 2011, about 250 million Americans live in or around urban areas. That means more than three-quarters of the U.S. population shares just about three percent of the U.S. land area.
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I wouldn't be at all surprised if the average for those three-quarters is higher than South-Korea.
 
Skripka said:
What you seem not to understand is that most of the USA landmass by area is "the sticks". If you randomly pick a county in the USA, odds are quite high the only ISP you'll be able to get is either dial-up, laggy expensive satellite, or if you are insanely lucky sub 3-megabit DSL.

Saying "we're doing quite well" is pretty damn funny since most people in the USA do not have access to the USA "average" this study cites.
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So are you saying that the majority of people that live in the US are located in "the sticks" rather than in/near metro area's? I live in South Dakota, one of the stick areas, and I get 50/10 cable. The other problem is that the state with the most unpopulated land mass, Alaska, counts towards our landmass even though very few people live there, (similar to SD and ND).
 
A lot of that is simply due to the sheer size of the US. There is so much rural area here. Just look at that list though. In the global lists, all those countries don't have anywhere near the area to cover in rural sq. miles that we do. Then flip to the highest avg per state; again most of those states don't have near the same sq. miles to cover as say Texas, California, most western states or even worse, large low populated states like Montana. Right now fiber has not been economical enough to roll out for most. From what I understand, Verizon is losing money on FiOS and they are a leader in pushing bandwidth right now so far as subscriptions go. It costs a lot of money to lay down a fiber architecture across a nation as large as ours.
 
BladeVenom said:
The size of the US is a poor excuse since most of the US population is concentrated in relatively small areas. 90% of us should have South Korean like speeds if things were done right.
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Then go by population density.

South Korea has 1271 people per square mile.
Japan 873
Hong Kong 16576
Switzerland 477
Netherlands 1047
Czech Republic 341
Latvia 88
Sweden 58
the US has 89.

So yes, when you factor in Area covered as well as population density, the US is doing very well when compared to the rest of the world.
 
GotNoRice said:
Care to list some examples of people who don't live out in the sticks yet still can't get good internet?
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I'm one of them, although likely an exception. Brighthouse offers 90/10 in my city now. I live within a few miles of city center, and everyone around me can get 90/10, or u-verse if that's what they want. Fastest I can get is 3 Mbit DSL, and it rarely even hits that (more like 1-1.5). All because I live in a shitty so called "luxury" (yeah right) apt complex that advertised as "cable ready" and "high speed internet available". By high speed they mean 3 Mbit, and by cable ready they mean the units themselves are technically wired for cable, but no cable service enters the property. I found all of this out AFTER I signed a 1 year lease. And apparently not having cable available is not grounds for termination of the lease, regardless of them advertising as such. Luckily I don't have much longer to go, and I'm out of here.

Funny you mentioned the central valley though, as that's exactly where I live. It's a giant shithole and I hate it.
 
I live in a town of just over 6,000 in Colorado and about 100 miles from the nearest city, Denver. I have 50/10 from Comcast for $60 a month. I can also upgrade to 100/10 if I want to.
 
I live in a town of 3,300 people. We have 2 Amazon data centers. We have multiple fiber lines coming through town with a POP in town. We have the capacity to have very high speed internet. Yet, CenturyLink DSL is still 10Mb, tops, at $90 a month. The other ISP is wireless, and tops at 7Mb. I attribute this to lack of competition as well as people will pay the $90 a month and get the 10Mb and not complain. They couldn't raise rates to pay for an upgrade to the infrastructure, as they are already high. So, we're kind of stuck. We do have the option of fiber to the home, but it's so expensive that no one has done it other than a few businesses. It's ~$20K to get fiber there and internet starts at $200 a month, but it is 100Mb. I hope to see them expand that a bit more and at least get fiber to some neighborhoods to make the initial cost lower, then offer some lower cost packages to get more people on...
 
Skripka said:
Actually when you start taking into account land area US does VERY poorly. Once you leave large (and dense) cities/towns you NEVER see an 8megabit ISP for love or money...you're lucky to see 3-6megabit. Most only see dialup.

Pull out a county map of the USA, and what you'll see is the supermajority of the USA by area doesn't get 8 megabit service, only the population centers. It is only thanks to projects like FiOS and Google Fiber that our ranking is as inflated as it is.
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I'm happy and very surprised to say that is not the case in East Texas. I am out in the county -- several miles from a city border and I have 75Mbps/2Mbps with Cableone (500GB a month cap on bandwidth), which is much faster than my DSL backup @ 3/.5.
 
GotNoRice said:
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the average for those three-quarters is higher than South-Korea.
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haha... your math sucks. if that statement was true (assuming 15 mbit for those 3/4 of the population), that remaining quarter would need an average bandwidth of negative 10.6 if weighed at 3/4 and 1/4 as you suggested to get 8.6 :eek:
 
The main problem is, there is always a monopoly in most areas. My only option here is Charter, while not bad, I would still like a competitor.
 
aShrubbery! said:
Wait wait... isn't the free market supposed to alleviate that specific problem? :rolleyes:

And your remark applies to healthcare as well.

When nobody gives a crap - ie not enough money to be made - that's what you get.
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Or when corporations are granted exclusivity and allowed to do anti-competitive tactics. Also applies to heathcare.
 
I believe DSL is holding us back. If they would offer a faster standard speed at an affordable price instead of 1.5MB/256KB for $50.
Where is Obama's "broadband for everyone plan" I remember hearing about several years ago?
BPL would work for me in the sticks but I havent heard anything about it in years.
 
Still waiting for our park to get cable in Sunnyvale, stuck with 3Mbps DSL at the moment.
 
I have a 100 Mbps down plan where I am. Once I clear some debt I am going to bump that up to the 250 Mbps down plan.
 
Simmonz said:
I have a 100 Mbps down plan where I am. Once I clear some debt I am going to bump that up to the 250 Mbps down plan.
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Why? Are you running servers? Careful doing that though on a residential service....there has been an article before on that where Verizon called the user out and made them switch to business class.
 
ravx25 said:
Why? Are you running servers? Careful doing that though on a residential service....there has been an article before on that where Verizon called the user out and made them switch to business class.
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Because it's there, no real good reason. No servers running at the moment although I have plans for one down the road. I'm in Canada. My ISP is Shaw who just got purchased by Rogers. I guess that's another reason to go for the 250 plan, do it before Rogers gets rid of it.
 
Dial up connections through NetZero or AOL would be enough if people weren't so greedy about downloading all those mp3's off Napster and Kazaa.
 
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