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"The rapid deployment of high speed internet access, fiber to the home, cable and other last-mile technologies, even in developing nations, means that the problem of needing offline access to functionality is becoming more and more a moot point."

High speed internet access is a bit of a relative term and you still need offline access to your data if and when the net goes down. According to this South Korea has faster broadband. A bootable USB device is going to be usefull for a long time to come.

Bullshit turfer! If goddamned Russia can do it, what is our excuse?

It's about High Definition Video. It's about Video Conferencing. It's about VOIP. It's about Telecommuting for your employers. It's about being competitive on the global market. It's about consuming more information faster to better perform in the global workplace. Cat videos are tertiary to this as EVERYONE needs downtime as well to maintain maximum productivity over the longest course of time. As broadband speeds go, America as a whole is falling into quicksand and the Broadband monopolies have shown that they have no intention of letting America do anything but sink. The whole Land Mass excuse hasn't been viable for a long time and now it's just becoming a complete embarassment.

Both China and Russia have more landmass than the US and while we're JUST edging them out in overall average speed (32.1mbps US, 24.2 CN, 27 RU) our cost per Megabit per second is through the roof by comparison ($3.51 US, $1.76 CN, $0.69 RU (all values reflected in USD) [These values were aquired from netindex.com]. Seriously. Stop being a fucking apologist for these assholes!

Globally we're still on fair ground but we could be doing so much better, and we need to be. We used to be the bastion of technology not even very long ago. For the longest while we could truly say "We're Number 1!" but now it's beginning to ring out more like "We're Numb!" and we need to wake up as a country. The President's statement was a start, now we need to follow through.

Yet, the UK generally ranks slightly below the US in average connection speeds.

http://www.netindex.com/downlo...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

So, you got lucky, and other people apparently got unlucky.

Even if we look at your individual situation, the question is: what's your salary relative to what you would be making in the US, what taxes do you pay, what other fees do you pay (e.g., TV licensing fees), etc.? And is the UK really an example of a highly regulated system, or is it more like the US and your service is due to competition?

Nonsense.

http://www.netindex.com/downlo...

http://www.akamai.com/dl/akama...

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/...

http://www.bloomberg.com/slide...

If you count the US on a state-by-state basis and compare with the rest of the world, US states would take most of the top-10 spots.

On the other hand, parts of Europe (and the EU) are poorly served in terms of telecom services, charging high prices, having low penetration, and/or being slow.

We're number 26! http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

yeah! Like in the old days before regulation, when railroads were free and people could vote with their dollar! Oh wait, that turned out REALLY BADLY.

You sir, are repeated a mantra, an idealogy, which sounds good on paper and absolutely sucks when it hits the real world. The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is invisible, because it is a fairy tale. I repeat myself: Great Idea, Doesn't Exist In The Real World. The ISPs are GIGANTIC. The Free Market is dead. Taking away regulation would let them get WORSE. It would be a nightmare, on par with the railroad barons of old.

Funnily enough, in other civilized countries that actually regulate their ISPs and cell phone companies, they have a plentitude of choice, service is good, and people are really happy with the competition. You should go overseas, where you can just pop down to the store, buy a SIM card, pop it in your phone, and go forth with cheap cell service. Or you actually have more than one ISP to choose from and the speeds are decent.

Seriously, look where we are ranked in the world in speeds. Fucking Latvia and Lithuania are kicking our asses. Northern Europe is amazing... Why? Because they FUCKING REGULATE. So sick of hearing this deregulation free market Econ101 simplistic no context or real understanding bullshit.

Link, so you can look for yourself: http://www.netindex.com/

I've heard your line repeated before around here, and it's time it was finally put to rest, since it grossly overstates the problem and muddles any attempts at rational discourse. Going by your own metrics for judging success, how many actual third-world countries do you see above the US in these lists?

Table of broadband penetration rates by country (sort the table by %)
Mean upload speed rankings by country
Mean download speed rankings by country

By my count, there are none that are ahead across those rankings.

Unless you're sticking to the original definition of "third-world country" (i.e. one that was neither associated with NATO and its allies nor the Soviet bloc and its allies), rather than the modern meaning of the term, I don't think it's fair to generalize in such a way as you have. Admittedly, there are a few developing nations ahead of the US on some of those lists, but they appear to have done so by sacrificing one metric for the benefit of the others (e.g. Senegal is ranked #10 globally for upload speed and #14 for download speed, putting it ahead of nearly all of the developed Western world, but its low single-digit penetration rate ranks in the 100s and indicates that only the elite of society are benefitting from those speeds). At least in my glancing over the lists, no developing nations stood out to me as being ahead in terms of both speed and penetration rate, though I'll admit I may have missed them.

Could the US use improvements in this area? Absolutely, and I want to be clear on that point. But what I consistently notice is that people, particularly those who have either never left the US to experience other parts of the world, or else those from smaller countries who have never traveled across a single country as large as the US, have no appreciation for just how difficult of a problem the US faces as compared to many other developed nations, simply due to its massive size. When you compare the US against countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, and Russia, which face similar (though clearly not identical) issues of scale, you find that the US is generally either comparable or ahead for most of those metrics (insert the requisite asterisk here with a note about how Macau, Hong Kong, etc. are not indicative of mainland China as a whole).

Again, improvements are still needed in these areas, but it's hard to have a rational discussion when you have one side overstating the situation to such an extreme. The fact is, the US' system is roughly comparable or ahead of countries that face comparable issues of scale. Which isn't to say that we should pat each other on the back, congratulate ourselves for a job well done, and think that everything's rosy. Rather, it's merely to say that things are probably about where they should be expected to be and that they're actually pretty decent when compared to most of the world, but that we clearly need to keep working at making it better, since there's lots of room for improvement.

I've heard your line repeated before around here, and it's time it was finally put to rest, since it grossly overstates the problem and muddles any attempts at rational discourse. Going by your own metrics for judging success, how many actual third-world countries do you see above the US in these lists?

Table of broadband penetration rates by country (sort the table by %)
Mean upload speed rankings by country
Mean download speed rankings by country

By my count, there are none that are ahead across those rankings.

Unless you're sticking to the original definition of "third-world country" (i.e. one that was neither associated with NATO and its allies nor the Soviet bloc and its allies), rather than the modern meaning of the term, I don't think it's fair to generalize in such a way as you have. Admittedly, there are a few developing nations ahead of the US on some of those lists, but they appear to have done so by sacrificing one metric for the benefit of the others (e.g. Senegal is ranked #10 globally for upload speed and #14 for download speed, putting it ahead of nearly all of the developed Western world, but its low single-digit penetration rate ranks in the 100s and indicates that only the elite of society are benefitting from those speeds). At least in my glancing over the lists, no developing nations stood out to me as being ahead in terms of both speed and penetration rate, though I'll admit I may have missed them.

Could the US use improvements in this area? Absolutely, and I want to be clear on that point. But what I consistently notice is that people, particularly those who have either never left the US to experience other parts of the world, or else those from smaller countries who have never traveled across a single country as large as the US, have no appreciation for just how difficult of a problem the US faces as compared to many other developed nations, simply due to its massive size. When you compare the US against countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, and Russia, which face similar (though clearly not identical) issues of scale, you find that the US is generally either comparable or ahead for most of those metrics (insert the requisite asterisk here with a note about how Macau, Hong Kong, etc. are not indicative of mainland China as a whole).

Again, improvements are still needed in these areas, but it's hard to have a rational discussion when you have one side overstating the situation to such an extreme. The fact is, the US' system is roughly comparable or ahead of countries that face comparable issues of scale. Which isn't to say that we should pat each other on the back, congratulate ourselves for a job well done, and think that everything's rosy. Rather, it's merely to say that things are probably about where they should be expected to be and that they're actually pretty decent when compared to most of the world, but that we clearly need to keep working at making it better, since there's lots of room for improvement.

US broadband is more expensive than a few countries.

Also the available speeds vary widely as well. The US has a decent speed overall. Given that a significant amount of content is available in the US. The real world speed in the US is significantly better than other locations around the world. See: http://www.netindex.com/

Lets also factor in region locking of content. The US generally does not suffer from the issue. Other regions around the world are simple blocked from content due to the region they are in. Again the US is at a significant advantage here.

There are a lot of other countries that are a hell of a lot more expensive than the US. Case in point a first world country Australia.

Overall the Internet experience in my humble opinion in the US is vastly superior to most other locations around the planet.

Now lets also factor in penetration of broadband and average household income. The US fairs very well indeed when you start to think about these factors. However the US is still behind some notables. Korea for some time still be the bench mark that other countries try to achieve on all fronts. Other countries are embarking on plans to significantly improve speed, bandwidth, and costs.

This article should have been about. If the US doesn't do anything to upgrade it's aging internet infrastructure it will soon be one the the most expensive and poorest performing broadband countries in the world.

At least here in the UK traditional exchange based ADSL is usually advertised "up to 8Mbps" (or sometimes more if the provider uses ADSL2+ gear) but what speed you actually get depends on the condition of your phone line and you don't get any discount if your line sucks.

True, although in general, ADSL2+ gear is fairly common. VDSL(2) is starting to become common. I'm assuming that most of the subscriptions will be artificially limited instead of technically limted. On the other hand, I'm not sure what the distribution of attained speeds is, so I'm downloading the netindex source data, in the hope that it will provide answers: http://www.netindex.com/source-data/

I'm guessing you live In Sweden, which has lovely network access but apparently doesn't teach geography for shit. Call me when you can find Bulgaria on the map and tell me what continent it's on.

Call me when you can find Bulgaria on this chart and tell me where it is relative to the US on that chart. :-)

(Or indicate why the chart is unrealistic. If it is realistic, perhaps Italy, for example, would have been a better choice.)

(And, no, that chart isn't a chart of fiber deployment, but if the countries below the US have more fiber deployed, one is tempted to ask what good it's doing.)

You might be interested in Net Index. It's run by the guys who run Speedtest.net. You can look at various ISP rankings by regions.

The editorial hits the main points, but perhaps understates the importance of US ISPs being controlled by non-competitive private companies. This is a disaster. Aside from Verizon Fios (which - surprise! - has stalled), Americans haven't put new pipe in the ground in ten years. Google shouldn't be making headlines with a modest proposed fiber-to-house project in Kansas.

In the 1990s, backbone providers had to sell bandwidth to all last-mile-ISPs at the same rate. There were literally tens of thousands of ISPs to choose from nationwide. In the name of deregulation, this got nixed around 2000. Backbone providers -- who also had local ISPs -- could price their competition to death. And they did. In 2002, we have about a dozen ISPs. Not so bad... but then they met at a conference and literally divided up the major markets between them. So we have a couple cable providers... but none in the same markets. Unlike a government monopoly which is beholden to the public will (with varying degrees of success), we have a monopoly on information services that is contractually obligated to shareholders to push their own content offerings.

As a result we have lower speeds and much, much higher prices than our friends in Asia and Europe. ( http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/ ) More troubling is the prospect of political filtering. Want information on breaking DRM? Not via our pipe, buddy.

And this is just landline.

That's funny: their currently available stats place Spain at 11.65Mb/s, which is an order of magnitude more than you stated. (Greece, at 5.73, is only half an order of magnitude more).

That's faster than the average broadband speed in the UK. 8Mbps is fast here, average is 2 or 4.

Not according to the netindex.com link in the parent, which has a measured (i.e. real and not advertised) median speed for UK users of more than 10 Mbps.

For your convenience, repeat links:
http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
http://www.netindex.com/download/2,4/United-Kingdom/

That's faster than the average broadband speed in the UK. 8Mbps is fast here, average is 2 or 4.

Not according to the netindex.com link in the parent, which has a measured (i.e. real and not advertised) median speed for UK users of more than 10 Mbps.

For your convenience, repeat links:
http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
http://www.netindex.com/download/2,4/United-Kingdom/

As for "blazing 10 Mbps", where does the author live that he calls that blazing? Malawi?

Or, according to your own link, any of the other 100 countries (~58% of the list) whose average download speed is less than half of that speed? Only around 19% of the countries on that list have average download speeds of 10Mbps or greater. But yes you're right, 10Mbps in London is probably on the low end of the spectrum. On the other hand, I suspect 10Mbps, to many people living in rural England, or even those in the commuter belt, might be considered "blazingly fast".

.....who is thinking of the children!

This is, unfortunately, why i think this is going to be free as in beer, but not as in speech. The risk of someone using it for child porn will likely outweigh any other concerns, and "for all" will be limited to "for all who will register and identify themselves before being accepted as a user", not including those unwilling to sign up, transient people who don't have time to sign up (tourists and people in London for a day), and, of course, unregistered immigrants or children.

As for "blazing 10 Mbps", where does the author live that he calls that blazing? Malawi?

Are these 200 Mb/s connections people are talking about in parts of Europe and Asia getting anywhere close to that once you're off the ISP's network? Perusing through speedtest.net worldwide results seems to suggest that world wide, real world speeds are pretty similar. to each other.

No, you are wrong. It is NOT a matter of Physics. It could be at some time in the future but right now it is a matter of greed.

The USA ranks 31st in the world in average Internet bandwidth. It's not a matter of population density. Do those other 31 countries know something about Physics that we do not? It's not unusual tor cable and telco drones to astroturf such sites claiming that US speeds are "fine". Obviously we have lost our "1st world" Internet status to countries whose standard of living is way below ours.

Compare your speed in the US with other locations in the US HERE .

The 1996 Communications Act gave cable and telcos $200B to finish the fiber optic installations started by many local governments frustrated by refusals of those cable and telcos to move from Copper to glass, because of Copper's physical limitations to carry high bandwidth traffic. That act also prohibited local governments from "competing" against the cable and telcos, but it did not contain performance penalty clauses (imagine that!) so the cable and telcos pocketed the money and promptly forgot about the fiber optic. Oh, that act RE-DEFINED the definition of "high" bandwidth down to 200,000 b/s, which is about the top end of V.92 speeds. Now, you have telcos using phrasex like "fasterize your internet speed with ***", as they sell actually low speed DSL Tier connections, VOIP and Dish TV for $89/m for "life". In France, for $30/m, you can get 40Mb/s with free nation wide phone and 200 TV channels. Of course, France must know some Physics that is unknown in the US.

There was a discussion a month ago about world average Internet speeds.

Slashdot discussion
Article

The USA is at the 29th position, averaging 9.88mbps. South Korea is tops, averaging 32.77mbps (meaning every Internet user gets this speed on average). Japan is 6th, averaging 19.98mbps.

Singapore is 30th, averaging 9.11mbps. We pay US$36 per month for 8mbps (now 16mbps) cable. Upload speed used to be 256kbps but is now advertised as 1.2mbps.

We're still way behind, dear AC !

- troll8901 (on AC because modding)

The graphs at the Ookla Net Index are totally worthless.

They demonstrate very crude trends, but without units on the time axis, who is to say if the increases are over the last day, month, year? Oh, wait, you have to read the sole paragraph of introductory text on an otherwise graphic page to learn that the graphs are rolling averages over the last 30 days. Silly me, instead of just finding it out from the graph, I was supposed to read something.

The vertical axes likewise have no units - all you are told is the maximum value (i.e., the intercept at the right-side y-axis). We have no idea what the minimum value of the y-axis is. What is more, the y-axis scaling for all the graphs isn't consistent. If the maximum value of the South Korea graph is 34 mbps, then that should be the scale factor used for all the other graphs, such that the maximum value for the Netherlands, 17 mbps, should be about half as tall. Instead, each graph is individually scaled so that the graph intersects the right-side y-axis at 90% height, making any graph-to-graph comparison impossible. Better yet, graph all the countries on a single plot, so that the relative speeds among countries are blazingly apparent along with the trends.

Without units on the graphs, the graphs add almost no value to the single number given to each country.

They should have a look at any stock quote service and learn how to convey information from that. Here's a suggestion. See how nice and labeled the axes are? Look, you can expand the axes to see not just the last month, but any segment of the total historical dataset. Want to overlay how one stock does against another, here ya go.

The 50 States map is pretty and all, but there isn't a scale that says what shade of orange/brown corresponds to what speed. Hover over a state and you get a number - but again with no units. Montana = 5.02. Whoopdie-freakin' do. 5.02 what? Mbps is the implied unit. But how do we know it's not density of internet users / sq km, or percentage of internet users that have taken their tests, or absolute number of testers, or per-capita consumption of french fries.

The vast majority of Canada is unpopulated or sparsely populated. 90% of Canadians live in a 200 km strip along the U.S. border. Distance from Vancouver to Halifax is 4443 km, giving a 200 km strip an area of 888,600 sq km (which includes a lot of water, but ignore that). Canada's population is 33.2 million, 90% of that is 29.8 million. So 90% of Canadians live in a population density of 33.5 ppl / sq km. The U.S. has a population density of 32.1 ppl / sq km.

From net index site, the U.S. has an average connection speed of 10.16 Mbps. Canada has an average connection speed of 7.89 Mbps.

US is 26th: http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

Just before Norway and Russia but after Ukraine and Austria.

But I guess it's normal, because of the small amount of money invested in the US infrastructure...