U.S. Internet Access Speeds Paltry on Global Scale
I had always known that high-tech countries like Japan indulged in amazing Internet connection speeds but a recent article in USA Today was a real eye-opener. Take this tidbit for example, the current median download speed in the U.S. is 1.97Mb/s. Compare that to 61Mb/s in Japan, 45Mb/s in South Korea, 17Mb/s in France and 7Mb/s in Canada.
Part of the reason for this is that the U.S. government and policymakers have not been pushing hard enough to build out the network infrastructure required to provide faster and more reliable Internet access to U.S. homes. And personally, I think the large telecoms are too busy trying to get what they want with anti-net neutrality measures rather than rolling out better services for their current customers.
The technology is here, we just haven’t been able to see it. There’s FTTH Internet access with Verizon’s FiOS service, which is only in very select areas as they have to lay fiber optic cables underground. Then there’s the very promising DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem technology. Regardless, this technology has not be able to spread fast enough into the homes that need it most. Does the government have to give them more money to push them or maybe the government should make a mandate that XX% of U.S. households should have XXMb/s Internet access by 20XX? The big telecoms seem to be very bad at this supply and demand thing.
I found it quite entertaining that the FCC defines high speed Internet access as 200 kilobits per second. That’s a top download speed of 25KB/sec - not exactly speedy.
What’s your connection speed and where are you located? Here in Atlanta, GA, USA I’m on a Comcast cable connection for 6Mb/s down and 384Kb/s up but my real speeds are usually slower and then sometimes they are much faster:
Speed test from Speakeasy.net
I have become desensitized to broadband connections as of late. I remember when I first got a cable modem during my freshman year of high school in 2000. It was amazing speed but now if I have to spend 20 minutes on a 1 megabit connection I will get aggravated rather easily. I also treasure upload speed much more than download speed with all of my Flickr, Amazon S3 and server uploads but there are no real connection plans for people like that. I would love to see an ISP that offers decent upload speeds like 2 megabits or so.
One of the primary reasons why we lost on the Internet speed war here in the states compared to other countries is that there are simply too much bureaucracy involved and too many channels you need to go through. Currently I have a 1.5Mbps download & 786Kbps upload dsl service, pathetic in my opinion.
When AT&T finally gets their act together to give higher speeds, they’ll have it so restricted there won’t be any point.
BTW, did you see this:
http://www.muniwireless.com/article/articleview/5011
If there’s any truth to it, it would sure explain the current situation.
Those sorts of speeds are very fast compared to most of the stuff availiable in the UK. DSL speeds vary so much most of my friends have 25kb/sec max. I’m lucky and I happen to get the full 8 meg (850kb/sec roughly) which is probally the most popular connection speed in the UK. It is possible to get 16 meg and even 24 meg but the phone exchanges are only being enabled very slowly.
Interesting. Was just talking to someone about the same article earlier today.
Pretty pathetic. Just got a call from the girl saying that Comcast hooked up internet at our apartment.
Can’t wait to come home and check out those speeds (or lack thereof)!
7MB/s in Canada? That’s pretty unlikely, I’d say around 70% of homes are at around 5MB/s and 25% is at around 1.5MB/s, with a very small percentage of people 7MB/s or greater.
Well, here’s the thing … in most other countries, i.e. not in the US, in some cities and cases you can get vDSL/DSL2 speeds up to 24 Mb bi-directional. And in a head-to-head price comparison with the services offered here in the US, it even appears very cheap. However, the reality is that most people don’t subscribe to those “high-end” connections, even if theoretically they can. It sure would be nice to at least have the possibility to pay for something like that here in the US, even if it would be pricey. I just had a MAN 50 Mb connection installed on one of the projects I work on, and one of our vendors have a 100 Mb connection to their office. That rocks! But at around $3,000/month, it’s hard to justify at home … :P
I’m 53966 kbps down and 178 kbps up. Now I know why it takes so long to upload photos to Flickr and takes 10 seconds to get a 100 Mb update from Apple.
I agree with yoda. Most of America simply doesn’t want high speeds. I overheard a guy today talking about downgrading his Comcast 6Mbps to the at&t $10 a month slow as shit DSL package. Most people simply don’t care and are not the Flickr/S3/BitTorrent users like us. Another consideration you have to look at when explaining why America is so low on the list is that America is geographically more spread out than Japan or France. The customer/per mile of fiber is much larger and as a result Telecom companies don’t want to make such a large investment if the return will take 20 years.
Pf… Yeah, right… I’ve been reading your blog since I first got my ibook and always feel wonderful learning about stuff from you. But this entry made me terribly miserable, because my friend I’m from Greece (I guess you’re related to it one way or another, due to your name). And here I am with my 76Kb/s top download speed, looking at the numbers, mumbling: “I didn’t need to see this..” The first 10Mbit connection showed up approximately 3 months ago (March 2007) and I guess that easily makes us the slowest web surfers in all EU today. Imagine what happens when I try to upload a podcast of 30Mb at 12Kb/s…
Anyways, keep it up, it’s great to surf one way or the other and read this page! Btw, widget couldn’t have been more helpful! ;)
Well, at least in the US your infrastructure is owned by one company like here in Australia. Telstra is pretty much holding Australian at ransom, have what they want at the price they want or it wont happen. The majority of us here are stuck on ADSL speeds maxing out at 8Mbps, but there is a premium to pay for that. I’m currently on 1536/256kbps plan for about AUD$70/month.
Some ISP’s have their own hardware in the big cities and have cable, up to about 17Mbps, and ADSL2+, up to 24/2Mbps, but for us regional customers, we are stuck at the hand of Telstra.
8mbps download
512kbps upstream
no time limits
30 gb of bandwith(since I’m a long date customer I have unlimited bandwith)
3 GB for emails
30 MB for personal webpage(pathetic, I know)
So far no traffic-shapping
All this for 50 €, 15 or so is for Cable TV(you have to be a customer in order to have internet access) and 35 for the internet. You’re able to get the same service for two thirds of the price but it’s not so reliable as TV Cabo, I’m a customer for about 3 years or so and so far I’m pretty happy with the service, only had it 2 or 3 times down(and that was because of my dumb neighbor who messed up the “tubes”) and on The EXTREME summers here in Portugal the modem goes down because it overheats :S
Still, this is in Portugal, practically a 3rd world country if compared to France, Germany or UK…
US is huge, it’s a bit understandable…
speed as of now: 424 kbps up, 24 down.. oh wow that’s bad.
It suits my uses though. 50$ AuD- used to be 45 but they put the prices up.
(Australia)
I totally agree that we need more upload bandwidth. I have 768 kb/s up speed, and about 4 Mb down speed.
I’m located on the east coat of the USA.
Ah you should come to India. Only recently ISP’s over here came out with 2Mbps plans, till then we were struck with 256Kbps which by the way is considered as broadband speed by the Telecom Authority :)
When I traveled to US recently, for the first time I worked with a 10MBps connection and I was amazed to see no progress bars while downloading files :)
Wondering how the experience would be with a 61Mbps connection !!
Let’s not forget that the U.S. gov. gave the telecoms money to spend on fiber-optic systems and they threw the money away. If the telecoms wanted to give us competitive Internet speeds they would; it’s not like they can’t afford it.
In Australia, I had 17Mbps down, 256k up. In Seattle, for the same price, I get 3Mbps down, 384k up. Bleh.
Actually, in France, we have 28 Mb/s lines… which is great :)
In Germany you can get up to 25Mbps down and 2,5Mbps up.
I have an 16Mpbs connection with 800Kbps up and pay around 30$
Greetings
Welllll, glad you posted on this subject. Over here in the good old “land down under” we’re lucky to get an 8mbps connection in most areas, as Chris stated above out network is pretty much controlled by a monopoly called Telstra and I believe they have held us back in catching up to the world. But thankfully for a Federal election coming, the “broadband market” has been a key issue leading up to this election. Both major parties have put forward their plans to give Australia nationwide broadband coverage. Most of the metro areas over here have just normal PSTN broadband and can get up to 8mbps and some inner city areas have ADSL2+ where you can get up to 24mbps (of course depending how far away you from the exchange). Well the new network that they are going to put in place is most likely going to be FTTN in metro areas, where places over there and in Japan are now talking and already implementing FTTH. So consider yourself lucky when talking on the subject of high speeds you have over there.
But the good thing is about this plan is that the Government in place have given this “contract” to a joint group that is not Telstra (the monopoly). Downside, it’s going to take roughly 2 years to put in place.
The whole “jist” of this comment, be grateful for what you have, haha.
Peace out.
Im in Rochester NY. Use Time Warner (Road runner). 2MB download 300kb upload
I’m surprised at Japan having 61Mbit/sec, considering they barely had anything to do with the Internet when we (the west) first started getting broadband.
My cable connection is 10Mbit/sec down 1.5Mbit/sec up, I live in western Europe.
Vodafone adsl in portugal now is offering speeds up to 26 megs and all the cool stuff that the other isp’s offer for aobut 50 euros p month or so.
The strange thing about it is that in the TV spot I saw they say “now you can download all the movies you want with our super fast network”, do I smell a MPAA threat letter? :O
@Dumitru, wellll not really, because there are a lot of services out there now where you can legally download movies when you buy/rent them, IE: iTunes. Over here, our main ISP gives you a service of downloading movies through a rental service and buying them as well
I’m in Canada any my videotron ISP average speeds are:
6640Kbps D/L and 784 Kbps U/L
@Josh, obviously you don’t know the Portuguese crowd :D, we got a bitorrent tracker with a third of the size of Piratebay or something like that, hidden from the outside world(only people with national ip numbers can enter it) and from any ip’s of the Portuguese police or any organizations linked to copyright infringement stuff. As far as I’m concerned, iTunes movie store is not available in Portugal and even if it’s available, video renting is cheaper here and you always get a better quality video/sound
wo guys. Here in Ireland im on a 1Mb connection with 100kbps up adsl, but it runs slower that that about 10% slower most of the time. Most of the speeds your quoting are dream like to me. We’ve had no investment in our telecom infrastructure. at the moment we have 78% population coverage, prior to last Sept. our phone line wasn’t broadband enabled. Ya i think we’re living in the dark ages here and our government keeps on touting about us being a technology hub. Currently Northern Ireland is the only country in the E.U that has 100% broadband coverage. So i think i better move to france! I’d be interested to know if those speeds quoted are for urban or rural areas or nationwide. I better dream on…
Hey David, my parents in Middleofnowhere, Co Westmeath, haven’t been able to hold a stable modem connection for 15 years, but they’re finally getting DSL as part of the national upgrade this Summer - any speed increase and stability will be welcomed in and given a stiff cup of Barry’s.
Here in Denmark I’m lucky enough to have a 20mb connection that costs around 400 Danish Kroner a month (that’s just under 40 UK pounds or 80 US dollars). I was paying around 30 UK pounds a month for my 8mb British Telecom connection back in London so I reckon it’s a pretty good deal. Hurray for the Danes!
We are pretty slow in Spain :-(
In Brazil the best speed internet connection providers offer is 8mbps, on ADSL 2. I’m using an 1mbbs and it’s fast; Can’t even imagine how fast a 60 mbps connection is.
Maybe I should think about moving to Japan…
In the UK at 100mb/s. I can’t believe in todays world we can’t do faster…. i do think the USA needs to move fast or they will be left well behind.
In Colombia, South America, 100 kbps download connections is considered broadband!! And there are still many users with those phone connections in the not so rich neighborhoods. I have a 512 kbps connection + tv + voip for about 40 USD and usually i have torrent downloading at 60 kb/s and i really feel that fast, the only place i know here with REALLY fast internet is my university at bogota citi with more than 10 gb down internet for a not so big university if compared with some american unis.
God you are so lucky, even those saying that their connections are pathetic (I understand one must say the thatn we you’ve get used to really fast connections)
Location the Netherlands.
speakeasy.net/
5543 kbps down
454 kbps up.
This is with a washington server.
A Dutch speedtest (http://www.speedtest.nl/)
727 KByte/sec down
93 KByte/sec up
But how many kbps is 727 KByte ?
And I come from:
http://weblog.mediatemple.net/weblog/2007/07/14/paul-stamatiou-breaks-into-the-technorati-top-100/
Congrats :-)
on problem with that is that you do not take into account the cable companies in Canada that have internet connection. Here in Quebec you have Videotron that offers a 16mbs connection, a bit pricey at 70 bucks (63 usd) and a 20/10 gig limit, but its still pretty good and its usually very reliable compared to what I have with my phone company “Bell” ={