Minneapolis and St. Paul local paper The Star Tribune this week was shocked to learn that the two cities are the eighth and first fastest U.S. cities respectively, at least based on speedtest data from speedtest firm Ookla. According to the paper, "some local experts" aren't buying Ookla's numbers, given that data collected by controversial mapping organization Connected Nation suggests much slower regional speeds:Connected Nation you'll recall got the inside track on Minnesota broadband mapping money, and was accused of using their political influence to bypass open public discussion and beat out the University of Minnesota for state funds. If their data undershoots Ookla's -- it's ironic, given they're usually criticized for being little more than an incumbent ISP (AT&T, Verizon, Comcast) policy vessel, tasked with "shining up" broadband stats to keep government regulators from imposing policies aimed at ramping up competition.

Of course as the paper discovers as the story's written, Comcast's 50 Mbps service with "Powerboost" was launched in this market back in 2008, and even traditionally-slow Qwest started offering a 40 Mbps VDSL product in portions of the market in response in 2009 (which as the paper's commenters note, accounts for the upward-trending Ookla speed data on the city and state level).