Image above is slightly outdated as South Korea, Japan, and France in particular now average 10-35Mpbs more
Sadly, the US sinks further and further out of relevance when the topic of global broadband speeds are brought up. Are average speeds pail in comparison to many other countries. Just a few numbers to get you all in a bunch:
- US Average Broadband Speeds: 4.8Mbps
- Japan widely offers speeds of 80+Mbps
- South Korea also is around the 70-80Mbps mark
- Even France slaughters us with speeds in the 40-50Mbps range
Sure, you could argue that these nations have much less square mileage to cover, which, costs them less in rollout and upkeep costs. Still, when countries across the pond are bouncing off of the 100Mbps routinely while we sit here twiddling our thumbs tyring ot open up Wikipedia, chugging along at 5-6Mbps (on the faster side — used by the general population) is ridiculous. Perhaps even more ridiculous is the fact that US broadband providers want to steal our money and piss it away without actually doing much upgrading. Why the colorful language? What are the speeds these “broadband” providers are lobbying the FCC to declare “Basic Broadband” for?
- Comcast: 0.256 Mbps (256Kb/s) — It’s comcastic!
- Verizon: 0.768 Mbps (768 Kb/s) — slightly better but still worthless for anything
The Comcast quoted number of even “basic broadband” is the dumbest thing and worst attempt and grabbing public money I have ever seen. Basic broadband running at 256K was ok in 2004. In 2009 the minimum speed should be 2-3 Mbps no if’s and’s or but’s. Of course, then there’s the whole issue with the blatant false and misleading advertising every internet provider is guilty of — that is, listing the maximum connection rate instead of real world daily speeds. My AT&T 3 meg connection actually steamrolls along at roughly .7-1.3 Mbps with ocasional “good days” of around 1.5 Mbps. Hardly what I’d call fast, reliable, or honest. These companies talk about innovation and being global leaders while our friends overseas laugh at us everytime they see a case like this. Comcast is a disgrace to America. Verizon isn’t far behind.
In reality, it’s pretty much all broadband providers. Here’s a crazy idea that’ll never see the light of day. Fire some executives and slash executive bonuses and pay. Why should they make huge sums of money when their networks are crap? Hopefully the FCC can see through their silkscreen of lies, deceit, and plain BS as nothing under 1 Mbps is broadband in my book. I’m sure there are many of you out there who agree no?
Source: Gizmodo, MSNBC, Image Source
