Report Issued on State-by-State Internet Speeds Another source says we're falling too far behind the rest of the world In speaking about FiOS expansion, the president of Verizon recently said that the United States telecom industry leads the world in mobile and broadband in “all the ways that count”. A state-by-state report ( pdf) on Internet speeds in the United States begs to differ. The report is issued by an organization called SpeedMatters which has a central purpose of encouraging the U.S. to step up to the plate and offer nationwide broadband speeds that are comparable to those available in other countries. As such, it’s framed within the context of the idea that we’re “falling behind” everyone else. For example, the page for Kansas stats is titled “Kansas and United States Falling Behind”. The median download speed for the U.S. is cited as being 1.9 Mbps and upload speeds are considerably lower which they say makes application of the Internet for things like sharing medical files all but impossible.
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  en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
1 edit | What he meant was.. quote:
In speaking about FiOS expansion, the president of Verizon recently said that the United States telecom industry leads the world in mobile and broadband in “all the ways that count”.
Which means we lead in profit making from world mobile and broadband, if I'm not mistaken.
It is also difficult to compare rural areas in 2006-2007 with countries like Japan and South Korea, that have some of the highest population densities in the world.
One point to pick at in the study... this was primarily residential DSL/Cable lines used for the test (or target audience), yet they point out that 341kbps is not enough bandwidth for patient monitoring or transferring medical records.
1. Who would put their patient monitor on a non-SLA DSL or Cable line ? If you're performing mission critical monitoring, you'd better have a T1 or better with SLA. I would expect nothing less out of a hospital.
2. You actually can do real-time monitoring on 300kbps... just don't use it for anything else.
Look who the source is:
© 2008 Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
|  |  NOYBSt. John 3.16Premium
join:2005-12-15
Forest Grove, OR
kudos:1 | Re: What he meant was..said by en102:1. Who would put their patient monitor on a non-SLA DSL or Cable line ? If you're performing mission critical monitoring, you'd better have a T1 or better with SLA. I would expect nothing less out of a hospital.
I don't think home medical monitoring would be considered mission critical, it is convenience and efficiency, not ICU.
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| | | en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | Re: What he meant was.. Depends on what's being monitored.
Either way, even a heart monitor could function across a 300kbps line... you just wouldn't want to.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
| | | | NOYBSt. John 3.16Premium
join:2005-12-15
Forest Grove, OR
kudos:1
4 edits | Re: What he meant was.. Whatever is being monitored, if it is that critical then you would not be at home. And if you are then you either need to get a different doctor or give someone else power of attorney because you've just demonstrated your incompetence.
Remote (home) monitoring is not for life support. If life, limb, etc. would be endangered by temporary, or even longer term, outage then it is not an appropriate use even with an SLA from ISP.
Think about it, it's not like your doctor is going to be glued to your monitor stream all day and night. That is what ICU is for.
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| | | | | | | Re: What he meant was.. Actaully there are a lot of elderly people that refuse or can't afford the care they need.
If for what ever reason they are living away from a doctor and using a internet connection for monitoring I would call that critcal.
If broadband speeds get better there could be a lot of enhancements in the area of home care. 1 nurse could monitor video feeds from homes of multiple people, VOIP communications, etc.
All I'm saying is think outside the box.
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Folding for our future!! | |
| | | | | | en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | Re: What he meant was.. While I do agree that it is possible (i.e. basic web cam, portable devices such as a blood/sugar monitor, pulse monitor, etc) where you could upload a day's worth of stats for review.
I wouldn't expect a hospital to have anything less than a 10Mbps or better (most likely DS-3) for voice and data.
Customer can not be considered stable while there are issues with companies adding filters, nebudad or caps on consumption.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
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|  dvd536as Mr. Pink as they comePremium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ
kudos:4 | Rofl! if you have a doctor monitoring you, you'd better hope your provider isnt comcast/cox.
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| | KearnstdElf WizardPremium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | however the HMO thinks it would be good enough because 300k with an SLA doesnt effect their stock holders as much as being in a proper facility!
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| | | en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | Re: What he meant was.. I agree on that... if it was up to the HMO, they'd pay for the access and give you a wireless setup just to get you out of the facility.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
|
 wifi4milezBig Russ, 1918 to 2008. Rest in Peace
join:2004-08-07
New York, NY | Open wide, here comes some more propaganda Regardless of how you feel about the state of the US broadband industry, no rational person can argue that this report isnt extremely biased. As such, its not worth the paper its printed on and should be completely ignored. There is nothing to see here folks, please move along. | |
| | | | Re: Open wide, here comes some more propaganda Is this data collected from their speed test on their website? If so I call 100% BS. I ran the test from two locations, one on the east coast, on on the west coast. The west coast location has 300Mb in that datacenter the east coast has 50mb in that datacenter. Their site's test results were way off. When this site first appeared on DSLR I tested from both locations and neither site reached the 10Mb their test claims to support.
I've just retested from both sites
The 45Mb site tested at 6517kbps/4850kbps.
The 300Mb site tested at 1904kbps/1569kbps.
How about a real, accurate test. | |
| | | en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | Re: Open wide, here comes some more propaganda There's tons of B.S. on these stats.
Even if 10-20Mbps was available (again, this was 2006-2007 data), who says that everyone (or anyone) on the highest tiers participated in many areas? There's a real flaw in their measurements.
Actual service available vs. actual service purchased and run against their site.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
| | | | Reviews:
 ·Great Works Inte..
| Re: Open wide, here comes some more propaganda I agree, this is a very flawed report. In my area I purchase 3mbps DSL because it's basically all I need and it costs less. 20mbps is available for twice as much money. Of course finding this out is a lot more difficult than just having people enter a ZIP code into a speed test. | |
| | | | | en102Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA | Re: Open wide, here comes some more propaganda Yup
I have multiple carriers that will sell me 10Mbps or higher.
I have no requirement for +10Mbps, or to pay for it.
A $25/month 3Mbps/512kbps works well for me.
I suspect that 'caps' will force users to hit higher packages in the near future though.
Eg. a 5GB cap/month on a 1.5-3Mbps DSL line would force me to a higher tier... even if I don't need the higher data rate.
This is a winfall for ISPs.
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Canada = Hollywood North | |
|
 ironweaselWeezyPremium
join:2000-09-13
Belen, NM
kudos:1 | Rhode Island #1. The smallest state in the union is ranked #1 for both download & upload speed.
Wonder why. 
Slowest state for both download & upload is South Dakota.
Incidentally, New Mexico ranked 27th in download, but 18th in upload. 
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| |  Doctor FourMy other vehicle is a TARDISPremium
join:2000-09-05
Dallas, TX | Re: Rhode Island #1. said by ironweasel:The smallest state in the union is ranked #1 for both download & upload speed. Wonder why. Probably for the same reason that Japan and South Korea are
on the top of the list for download/upload speeds worldwide -
both countries have a fairly high population density - IOW
much less sprawl.
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"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they are very sophisticated idiots." - Doctor Who (from Robot)
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| | | | | Re: Rhode Island #1. said by Doctor Four:said by ironweasel:The smallest state in the union is ranked #1 for both download & upload speed. Wonder why. Probably for the same reason that Japan and South Korea are on the top of the list for download/upload speeds worldwide - both countries have a fairly high population density - IOW much less sprawl. As if there is something wrong with [suburban] sprawl? | |
| | | | | | Re: Rhode Island #1. as in it is more costly to wire the same amount of houses? a node can reach more people without having to go further? | |
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|  cro172
join:2007-06-12
Des Moines, IA | said by ironweasel:Slowest state for both download & upload is South Dakota. Alaska was slower, just FYI.  | |
| | | ironweaselWeezyPremium
join:2000-09-13
Belen, NM
kudos:1 | Re: Rhode Island #1. said by cro172:said by ironweasel:Slowest state for both download & upload is South Dakota. Alaska was slower, just FYI. I see that.
Made the assumption that there were 50 states, so SD was the slowest at 50th. They tricked me and counted District of Columbia as a "state". That made Alaska #51.
Tricky Tricksters. | |
| | | seacap
join:2002-11-29
St Thomas, VI | betcha the US Virgin Islands is the slowest in the world!!! | |
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 ThrowDemsOutIf you can't convince 'em, confuse 'emPremium
join:2002-03-03
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:4
1 edit |  Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt
SpeedMatters is nothing but a sock puppet for the CWA.
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| | | | Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt said by ThrowDemsOut:So take the study for what it is worth - very little. Actually, the raw number data is actually worth something. It might be outdated, but it is, by far, the most comprehensive dataset out there for speeds in given areas. | |
| | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
 ·Comcast
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt Speedtest.net is more comprehensive...they've conducted about 9000X more tests than SpeedMatters.
Check out their national graphs. The US appears to be on top with a 5425 kb/s average for download and is second to the Bahamas (but not by a huge amount, just about 10%) with 936 kbps upload averages.
Of course, most of the people using SpeedTest have high speed connections...
Interesting how SOuth America's average speeds by country are more in line with the US's average speeds with the SPeedMatters test. That is to say, the top 10 countries ranged from 955-1484 on connection speeds. Uploads are 250-530. Ech. On the other hand, even 250 is good for my connection right now.
In Europe, the US wouldn't even make it into the top 10 onconnection speeds, but Sweden tops out at 8870 kbps down, 2956 kbps up. Still fast but not what they were claiming, Uploads in Europe's top 10 range from 1806 to 4529 kbps. Again, faster than any North American average. But North America has bigger countries.
Australia is fastest in that part of the world, with 4191 kbps down, 464 kbps up. IOW we shouldn't be complaining about our internet by those standards, right? They're also capped the heck out of over there :/
In Asia the lowest "top 10" country is superseded in speed by the highest one by a factor of about 10. Japan is 14777 kbps down, Korea is 6783. Not as smoking as you'd think but still respectable. These are real-world speeds, remember  Hong Kong is actually second place when it comes to uploads, but anyway Japan takes the cake at 6886 kbps, faster than the US's download average. Impressive. Korea is 3416 kbps on upload. Respectable, but not as crazy as you might see on the whitepaper these guys put out.
Africa is just sad, with speeds ranging from 535 to 1358 kbps...as their top 10! Uploads on the top 10 range from 185 to 314 kbps. See, we don't have it that bad
Just sayin'. At any rate, check out speedtest.net for a more accurate picture of internet speeds by country, continent, state and city. These guys' results are sort of bunk. Especially since RCN's speeds on Speedtest.net exceed anything on Asia's top 10, ISP wise.
Heh, just sayin' | |
| | | | | | Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt said by iansltx:At any rate, check out speedtest.net for a more accurate picture of internet speeds by country, continent, state and city. Their location data is suspect because they use GeoIP-like methods for guessing where a given host is located.
These guys' results are sort of bunk. Especially since RCN's speeds on Speedtest.net exceed anything on Asia's top 10, ISP wise. Speedtest users can shop servers, going from server to server getting the best results. So Speedtest.net is not even close to scientific or much better than the Speedmatters tests.
Most providers, including RCN, are nowhere near the speed of some of the other providers in other nations. | |
| | | | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Comcast
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt Interesting, because they do a decent job of locating me: in the city I live near.
Also, shopping servers is fine. To get a true speed test result ou pick the server with the most capacity possible. I'm guessing that's why Speedtest.net doesn't put latency in the graphs
They also keep track of the IP doing the speed test, so they can do some normalization.
Additionally, is there really a better alternative than Speedtest.net's stats? Theirs is a TON more scientific than SpeedMatters. On the one hand you have 400+ million tests, and on the other 40,000, a number that isn't even statistically significant given the number of people using the internet in the US. Granted, Speedtest.net isn't US-only but I'm betting 100+ million of its results are. So yes, it is much mroe scientific to look at their results than Speedmatters'.
About RCN vs. other providers, I noticed when I looked at Europe that they had a lot of ISPs over there testing in the (real world) 40 Mbit range. That's cool. FiOS can do that too.
Responding to another post, Norway probably can't get ultra high speed access everywhere, and if it does, I'd hate to see how much is going from taxpayers' pockets to subsidize the access. | |
| | | | | | | | Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt said by iansltx:Interesting, because they do a decent job of locating me: in the city I live near. And? The point is that the method used for getting that information does not accurately determine position - zip code, etc. IP location services that attempt to guess your location like that have serious issues. All of those services that guess your location based on IP do a decent job estimating your location, but they are nowhere near accurate enough to be relied upon for zip, street, etc. information.
Also, shopping servers is fine. To get a true speed test result ou pick the server with the most capacity possible. I'm guessing that's why Speedtest.net doesn't put latency in the graphs
They also keep track of the IP doing the speed test, so they can do some normalization. That would be fine if all the ISPs gave their customers static IPs... As it is, most do not just hand out statics to residential customers, including the one I work for, so normalization is useless.
Additionally, is there really a better alternative than Speedtest.net's stats? Theirs is a TON more scientific than SpeedMatters. Not even close. Neither is scientific. Speedmatters, however, controls their test servers. Speedtest does not control all of the servers used for speed testing.
On the one hand you have 400+ million tests, and on the other 40,000, a number that isn't even statistically significant given the number of people using the internet in the US. Granted, Speedtest.net isn't US-only but I'm betting 100+ million of its results are. So yes, it is much mroe scientific to look at their results than Speedmatters'. Sorry, more data does not necessarily mean better data, especially when no quality control is performed on that data.
Responding to another post, Norway probably can't get ultra high speed access everywhere, and if it does, I'd hate to see how much is going from taxpayers' pockets to subsidize the access. And that is different than the US how? I will say that, at least in countries like Norway, people are willing to invest tax money into infrastructure. I can think of a dozen or so infrastructure projects in this country that need to be funded but aren't for whatever reason (the money probably went to something stupid like tax breaks for some special group or a museum on the preparation of pigs' feet in BFE). | |
| | | | | | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Comcast
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt Customers' IPs wouldn't change while they're shopping servers for a better result.
Also, I said *some* normalization, not *total* normalization.
About SpeedMatters, 300 Mbit to one server and 45 to the other are NOT enough to give accurate speed test results, particularly if the servers are only homed into one network, and I'm betting that the 45 Mbit server was. Compare this with places like Data393 where they have multi-gigabit links available and you'll see that Speedmatters will have an obvious bias to the lower end on speeds.
Also, if Speedmatters had only two servers for speed tests overall, versus a few dozen that speedtest.net has (through various providers) then if they had enough tests to get "accurate" results the servers woul be too overloaded to give accurate results.
Also, are you saying that no trends can be taken from 400 MILLION tests, a lot of which are in the US, and that Speedmatters' number of tests is valuable for trending information though the same number of tests is taken by Speedtest.net every 1.5 hours or so? I don't buy it.
How about using BBR's speed test results, does that work better for ya? | |
| | | | | | | | | | Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt said by iansltx:Customers' IPs wouldn't change while they're shopping servers for a better result. You are basing that statement on what? When an IP lease or PPPoE session expires, it expires.
About SpeedMatters, 300 Mbit to one server and 45 to the other are NOT enough to give accurate speed test results, particularly if the servers are only homed into one network, and I'm betting that the 45 Mbit server was. Considering you don't know the Speedmatters setup, trying to make arguments like this one is pointless.
Compare this with places like Data393 where they have multi-gigabit links available and you'll see that Speedmatters will have an obvious bias to the lower end on speeds. Actually, you can't make that assumption based on the information you have. There are far too many assumptions that have to be made.
Also, if Speedmatters had only two servers for speed tests overall, versus a few dozen that speedtest.net has (through various providers) then if they had enough tests to get "accurate" results the servers woul be too overloaded to give accurate results. How many is enough tests? You assume that you have to have enough tests that Speedmatters servers would be overloaded. Statistics says otherwise.
Also, are you saying that no trends can be taken from 400 MILLION tests, a lot of which are in the US, and that Speedmatters' number of tests is valuable for trending information though the same number of tests is taken by Speedtest.net every 1.5 hours or so? I don't buy it. You don't buy it because you don't know how to digest, process and interpret the data that is being present by either Speedmatters OR Speedtest.net. Neither dataset it very good, period. Trends can be taken, but because of the lack of control that Speedtest.net has over test servers, sites and the connectivity (there is no standard setup), their data has more issues. The Speedmatters setup is uniform and is less affected by site variability. If that concept escapes you, there is no reason to proceed since you've already made your mind up and won't change it, regardless of the data and reasons presented.
How about using BBR's speed test results, does that work better for ya? Even that data is suspect since the connectivity and setup for each server varies. | |
| | | | | | | | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Comcast
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt Okay, here's the reason I won't take SpeedMatters' results, and this has been discussed at length in other posts: server overcrowding, such that an accurate speed test cannot be taken. Any connection faster than a few megabits is capped off artificially by the fact that the server can only handle a few hundred megabits of data pouring in at the same time...or 45 in the case of the west coast server.
Also, even if the SpeedMatters results WERE accurate, they were from a year-plus ago. I know my ISP has increased speeds by a third since then, as have a lot of other providers.
Go flame somewhere else. Maybe take a look at an XKCD comic or two. | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt said by iansltx:Go flame somewhere else. Maybe take a look at an XKCD comic or two. Clearly you need to learn what a flame is... | |
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| | | | | | | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Comcast
·Verizon Online DSL
| Oh, and Data393 DOES have multiple gigabits of connectivity to the internet. Their website says so. Seeing as how they're a colocation\server facility I wouldn't be one to doubt that. So no, that "assumption" is not borne out. On several occasions (using a college link) I've gotten 75 Mbit/s both ways on the Data393 Speedtest.net server, an order of manitude more than SpeedMatters would likely support. Don't worry though,Speedtest.net filters university results out of their equation when it comes t internet speeds. | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt said by iansltx:Oh, and Data393 DOES have multiple gigabits of connectivity to the internet. Their website says so. Seeing as how they're a colocation\server facility I wouldn't be one to doubt that. So no, that "assumption" is not borne out. Actually, yes there are still plenty of assumptions... What connectivity to their providers core network does the server have? What types of tweaks have been performed to Apache to improve performance that affect the validity of speedtests have been made? And those are just two you have to know before you can trust the reliability of the data you are presented with.
You can believe that the Speedtest.net tests are somehow more scientific or better than Speedmatters, but that is anything but true. The fact is, Speedtest.net data is based on non-uniform setups that aren't controlled by one group of people, ergo are not better than a server that may be overloaded. Period. | |
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| |  DogfatherPremium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA | Comprehensively inaccurate. Their data testing methods are seriously flawed and data worthless. The testing results do not reflect reality. | |
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See 9 replies to this post |
| iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Comcast
·Verizon Online DSL
| Agreed on the fact that the data is pretty old. The better hting to do would be to look up the results on Speedtest.net, where many, many more people are registering in fo access.
And yes, the comparison of a huge country like the US to anyone but Canada (and I'm not even sure about the Canada numbers they threw out) is like throwing Rhode Island in on the map speed-wise. You can easily wire GigE in big cities to everyone at a low cost, particularly if they're in a small coutry and that sort of thing. Whereas the US is a huge area to cover, with actually rural areas, that you don't find really anymore in Japan and Korea.
So yeah, it's biased. And the form-letter pages that they had for each state wre just plain annoying. But it does point out one thing: American broadband is slower than molasses in midwinter compared to a lot of places. | |
| | | | | Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt Sorry there are multiple other countries with lower population densities than the US that have higher broadband speeds. (Checkout Norway) They have governments or state run companies that are pushing broadband forward as fast as they can. We are just plain dumb.
We get the worst of both worlds. No real competition and no organized approach to getting everybody broadband. Some places have 3 complete infrastructures (rich zipcodes) and some none (rural zipcodes). We would have been better off building one and leasing it to all takers.
Minimizing infrastructure duplication enable upgrades to be done quickly Three is not as bad as cellular that built 5 different wireless infrastructures and is still worse than all of Europe, Japan, Korea and many third world countries
(The US bought Analog, CDMA, GSM, TDMA and Nextel wireless infrastructures). At least with LTE, we may be done buying wireless infrastructures (if WiMax dies).
The best approach is build one infrastructure, upgrade it as often as you can and treat it like a national highway system open to all.
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| | | | iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Comcast
·Verizon Online DSL
| Re: Old data and biased source - the CWA who hate telecom mgt Call me hypercapitalist but I don't want MY tax dollars paying for a system that may well fail, not be upgraded to support demand or supply, etc.
We've seen what has happened to muni wireless. The only "success story" cost taxpayers $5 million and serves only city employees. These employees could likely have been better served by a private entity...pay the entity $40 a month per wireless line and you give that company enough money tuo upgrade their infrastructure. With such a large customer, the wireless companies would compete and thus have a better network for everyone.
Last I checked, competition is good for the economy, and all that. The problem is that there is no competition, or very little int the internet market, not that there isn't a government-run network. I'd rather pay $50 a month for internet access to a private company than pay $55 a month extra in taxes to the government, who would then contract a private ompany to build a network. Uh, no thanks.
Also, the whole "one network" thing doesn't work. Fiber will only reach so far before the cost becomes prohibitive, or at least more prohibitive than a wireless setup. By the way, WiMax is here right now and LTE isn't, and WiMax can support 70 Mbps symmetric, so what's the big push to kill it off? LTE I'm sure can adapt their standard to be compatible...
If you want government-subsidized internet, move to a country that has it. Then realize that you're paying extra in taxes for this subsidy. Disconnect, anyone?
Though on a slightly different angle the government would do well to foster any competitors, especially small ones, that look to have a working product as far as 'net access goes, to keep the megacorps in check. Sort of like how Grande Communications provides cable competition in areas near (60 miles away or more) me.
Also, I have no problem with calling 768 kbps internet broadband. Everyone can agree that it's not great speed and all but you can watch online video, use VoIP and do gaming over such a conection, provided it has decent latency. Oh, and 256 kbps upload speed is broadband too, I'd say. Or if you want to be picky make it 384. Though everyone agrees that 200 kbps is NOT.
Another problem with the 2/1 broadband requirement is that it would mean a T1 connection isn't broadband. Which is a load of baloney.
Also, the US didn't buy ANY wireless infrastructures that you spoke of, Rob_. That was the wireless carriers. At the beginning of things there was actually one standard, AMPS. Then features were added and CDMA came out. GSM followed later and had more features, but at the same time CDMA got some upgrades. Now we're down to two networks. Sure they're incompatible, but so are cable and DSL. People can compete with proprietary technologies as long as those technologies allow access to the same types of (unfettered) service: voice, video and internet data.
So please by all means let the government come in and stir up competition by fostering new internet service providers opening up for inexpensive license wireless bands to take backhaul out of the hands of the LECs. But I don't want to pay extra taxes just so my internet *might* be faster.
Then again, I plan to solve the internet problem in my area, so I guess that's why I don't like armchair debate. | |
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| | Facts are whatever you want them to be Most of the people that read that report will nod their head in unison, happy that the US is AGAIN first in EVERYTHING. It will never even cross the sheeps mind that the report is biased and probably just plain wrong. | |
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1 edit | Terrible report and data I took their speed test and they said my download speed was about 60% of what it is on speakeasy testing with a chicago server. But upload was the same. If they aren't testing each person with multiple locations, this data is actually trash. They should have asked people to declare their download and upload speeds and tested the connection from multiple locations from around the country. Then took the fastest speeds and compared them to what the advertised speeds were. They could have made 3 different maps: advertised speeds, actual speeds, and average speed to multiple locations. It would have been much more useful data. And since America is physically bigger the data in smaller countries is probably going to have less variance from advertised speeds since the data is traveling less distance through less systems though less chances of intermediate bottlenecks.
Edit:
I would also like to add that considering we are hearing a lot of news about canadian ISPs setting download caps, they should have also asked if the user knew if they had download caps and if so what they were. Again, another huge factor in the state of broadband. A 100mbit speed test is meaningless if the connection has a 40gb download cap. | |
| DogfatherPremium
join:2007-12-26
Laguna Hills, CA
4 edits | Based on their speeds? Their tests aren't accurate at all I call bull crap. I ROUTINELY test 30Mb/15Mb to servers all across the country and their site posted less than 15Mb down and only 3.6Mb up. Total bull crap.
Of course they are going to show the US sucks. Their testing methods are beyond flawed and test servers no where near capable of reporting accurate throughput.
Speedtest.net which does exponentially more tests and has tons of test servers all over the world is both far more accurate and show the US in a good position with a 5.4Mb download average which is better than most Asian countries, only slightly behind Korea and ranks similar to France, Germany and Norway.
So that begs the question...who is funding this biased propaganda? Who stands to make a bundle off these lies? | |
| | | | | Re: The CWA is at it, again! Yeah, because all of those countries are just horrible places to live.
FYI, Japan and South Korea are some of the most capitalist countries in the world, perhaps even moreso than the US. | |
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 DavidI have a son- d3Premium,VIP
join:2002-05-30
Granite City, IL
kudos:68 | Well the speed test is somewhat accurate it's not bad it matched what I get at other sites
Down: 5482
up: 651 | |
|  TechieZeroTools Are Using MePremium
join:2002-01-25
Gibsonton, FL |  That PDF Report Is a Year Old
Since ISPs are not state run yet, they have an obligation to make money. If there is money there or they think money will be there, they will do it. Plain and simple. | |
|  CheesePremium
join:2003-10-26
Naples, FL
kudos:1 | All these... Posts about "monitoring", I don't think they ever meant "monitoring" patients over the internet, they said "medical files, which are different. | |
|  TransmasterDon't Blame Me I Voted For Bill and Opus
join:2001-06-20
Cheyenne, WY | Why am I not suprised This report shows just how crappy or network is, coming from the Communications Workers of America. I am not saying their report is BS it just seems to be more then a bit self serving. Look at the Map of Wyoming, Looks bad doesn't what they don't tell you is the white areas have very few people living there, the Yellow areas have a few more people living there but over half of the state's population lives in in Casper, Cheyenne, Laramie, and Sheridan. AS I am point out to people Wyoming is miles and miles of miles and miles,
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Send a prayer to Allah, eat Beans. | |
| | | Speed and Price What is important is the price you pay for speed.
Europe, South Korea and Japan get more speed for a cheaper price.
Cable in the USA has been very expensive for many years.
Verizon DSL has been very, very slow.
In France it is standard to pay one low price per month for cable, phone, and internet. All this on DSL using your standard phone line.
You even get unlimited long distance to certain countries.
Verizon has had this DSL capability for many years and NEVER gave customers the speed they deserved with the ADSL/2 capability. Now, they are pushing for you to spend on their
Fios at a hundred per month.
The speed offered is more than necessary, and if France can offer 10 - 30 Mbit DSL connections with Cable Television so could have Verizon.
I don't understand why anyone would even consider getting this at such an exorbiant price. | |
| | | Questionable website I put in my zip code (49287) and did the speed test at speedmatters.org, which is what this report was based on.
I live in Michigan, but the test results showed me as being in Indiana. This makes me want to question the research.  | |
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