The Federal Communications Commission in the United States has release a technical paper which found that U.S. consumers are not receiving Internet connection speeds as advertised by their service providers. How bad is it? Well, the FCC has found that most people are receiving only half of their promised connection speed.
Only half, how is this possible? For numerous reasons…from congestion and degradation on provider lines, to user’s using wireless networks instead of wired (which can have a big impact on speed) to general poor performance of user’s computers. In other words, they didn’t really point their finger specifically at anyone. But they did say the average advertised Internet connection speed is 7-8 Mbps, while the average true, constant speed is 4 Mbps.
Heavy Internet users or those who like to watch HD video also got no love from the FCC. Turns out these people make up only 20% of the population but consume 80% of the data online. According to the FCC, the remaining 80% of users consume much less data…and as a result…need much slower, constant, connection speeds. About 4 Mbps to be exact (HD video on the web requires a recommended 7 Mbps+ connection speed).
So that’s not a real push for the U.S. to increase it’s Internet capacity, where it already lags far behind the rest of the world, where the average, constant connection speed is 15 Mbps…or 2-4 times faster than average U.S. connection speeds.
Want to know if you’re really getting your advertised speed or just how fast your Internet connection really is? There are a number of free tools available that will do just this (and you’ll probably get different results from each):
Speakeasy
Speedtest
DSLR Reports
Verizon (for FiOS customers)
And, this is news?