A new study by the Communications Workers of America, using data supplied by Speed Matters, reports that out of all industrialized nations, the United States ranks 28th in Internet speed.
Just how slow do we have it in the U.S.? Well, South Korea is currently 4 times faster than the U.S. And according to CWA President Larry Cohen, “At our current rate of progress, it will take the United States 15 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in South Korea”.
Within the United States, the report was also broken down state by state. The states with the fastest Internet connections? Delaware, Rhode Island and New Jersey. And the slowest? Montana, Alaska and Idaho.
On average, the United States has an Internet connection speed of 5.1 mbps. And 20% of those taking the speed test in the report didn’t even meet the FCC’s definition of “high speed”…which is a dismal 768 kbps. And people wonder why they get buffering messages while playing back videos on the web.
To see where your state ranks in the speed test, visit the Speed Matters site by clicking here.
Mr. Kaminski – I have to believe this. I live in a small town in Texas (near Dallas/Fort Worth) which might as well be a third world country. Hughes net is the only thing offered that can give any speed (more like 100kbps)with non-existant customer service. Verizon and AT&T are spotty and undependable. Hughes is limited to 200MB/day in data transfer, so forget much video.
If downloadable TV and Video are the thing of the future I guess I’ll have to move. How long before most of the U.S. will be able to download DVDs?
Does anyone have a list of reasons why this is? It is so true and so sad. We are so behind and I am starting to think the goverment wants it that way.