East Coast Broadband Fastest In USA

Death Metal Maniac writes "The study, which was conducted by affordable-broadband advocacy group Speed Matters, found that the nine states with the fastest median download connections are all located on the East Coast. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps) and Delaware (6.7Mbps) have the fastest, and nearly triple the national median download speed of 2.3Mbps. Rounding out the Top 5 states are New Jersey (5.8Mbps), Virginia (5Mbps) and Massachusetts (4.6Mbps)."

Comments

geh

[snarfies]

That's nice.

Meanwhile, as of last week, we STILL cannot buy FIOS in Philadelphia. No matter how much I want to give Verizon my money, they just won't take it.

Re:geh

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, as of last week, we STILL cannot buy FIOS in Philadelphia. No matter how much I want to give Verizon my money, they just won't take it.

That's because FIOS requires major infrastructure upgrades on the part of Verizon. But they are working on it. It just may be a while till they get to your neighborhood.

Re:geh

[FredFredrickson]

Up here in NH (One of the many states nobody cares about, apparently), I got a flyer from my new local provider called Fairpoint.

There was a big controversy over fairpoint buying out NH, Vermont, and Maine, because fairpoint clearly didn't have the resources to roll out fiber optics, and verizon had "plans" to, (apparently not).

Anyway, I got a flyer from them announcing faster-than-ever 7.1 mbps downloads. Of course, in Boston, Comcast offers 16 mbps, but hey, this was still a nice move from my current verizon dsl at 3 mbps.

So I called them up and asked how to get started. They did some checking on things, and told me it wasn't available in my area. I was confused. Did they not have my address when they sent me the flyer? I begged them to take money from me, I just want some speed, please! But alas, We live in the USA. In internet terms, we're third world.

Re:geh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, that's what happens when you live in your parents' basement.

Re:geh

[nine-times]

So I called them up and asked how to get started. They did some checking on things, and told me it wasn't available in my area. I was confused. Did they not have my address when they sent me the flyer?

Yeah. Frustrating. I've been having fliers delivered to my doorstep for *years* now, and yet they're not even remotely in my area. It's not just a situation where the neighbors down the street can get FiOS, but I'm just barely on the other side of the line-- no. You can't get FiOS in my zip code. You can't even get it in my neighboring zipcodes.

Re:geh

[yuna49]

Boston was supposedly the first metro area they rolled out FiOS, and while almost every suburb has it around here their urban penetration has been exactly ZERO.

While Slashdotters are often more interested in FiOS internet service, it's cable television services which call the shots. To offer cable in a locality, Verizon must first obtain a license from the city or town. As of now, the City of Boston has not granted them a license. Looking at the City's website, I don't see any evidence that Verizon has applied for a license either.

Maybe you should call them to see where the licensing procedure stands?

Re:geh

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not port blocking that I'm that interested in. It's the forging RST packets that pisses me off. Any ISP that injects RST packets into a communication fraudlently can't be called "not a bad ISP". That's like an airline stopping a non-stop flight from New York to LA in Cleveland and stranding all of the passengers there because someone in the back farted a little too loudly. You certainly wouldn't call them "not a bad airline", regardless of how many non-stop flights they had that stopped in Cleveland and stranded their passengers there.

Re:geh

[Cheeko]

Comcast has been horrific for me. Their customer service is terrible, their software for their DVRs is awful (even their own techs say it), and they engage in all sorts of shady underhanded stuff like forging reset packets, throttling high usage customers (who are within the bandwidth limits they ALREADY paid for).

Overall they've just been a terrible company to have to deal with.

Re:geh

[nabsltd]

I mean, FIOS is fast and all from what the numbers say, but I don't look forward to being a Verizon customer.

Yes, it's painful to navigate their phone tree to get anything done. I wanted to increase the speed (i.e., pay them more money), and it took nearly two days of tranfers to get to the right person to talk to.

On the other hand, it took less than 3 days to get that higher speed enabled, and I have had so few problems with the service itself (almost no downtime, no speed limits, etc.) that it's worth the occasional hassle.

One other thing I like about Verizon FIOS is that the price they quote is what you pay. I'm on a $139.99/month plan (15/15 with 5 static IPs) and that is exactly what my bill is each month. No tax, no franchise fee, no "network access fee", etc. Of course, the cell phone side of Verizon can't do their bills like this because "it's a goverment-imposed rule" (not).

Re:geh

[nabsltd]

While Slashdotters are often more interested in FiOS internet service, it's cable television services which call the shots. To offer cable in a locality, Verizon must first obtain a license from the city or town.

This is only for TV service. I had FIOS internet for nearly two years before my county approved Verizon as a cable TV provider.

Re:geh

[SkyDude]

I believe a major part of the problem with Fios in bigger cities is the fiber itself. Last year, Corning announced development of a bendable fiber, which will help the installation in multi-family homes. Not having ever had any experience as a fiber installer, I don't know if this is BS or not, but it seems Verizon is now making plans to penetrate the bigger cities.

Re:geh

[Ultra64]

Bad Analogy Guy, is that you?

Re:geh

[Ucklak]

Cox

Arkansas
$45 for 9mbps
$60 for 12mbps
http://www.cox.com/gocox/HighSpeedInternet/

Arizona
$45 for 12mbps
$60 for 20
http://www.cox.com/arizona/hsi.asp

Santa Barbara
$50 for 5mbps
$65 for 12mbps
http://www.cox.com/santabarbara/highspeedinternet/packages.asp

Idaho
$42 to $56 for
7 mbps to 12 mbps
http://www.cox.com/idaho/highspeedinternet/pricing.asp

Re:geh

[paganizer]

Paris, TN; outside "city" limits:

Beasley Wireless
$40 for 384k down, 128k up (except during daylight hours, when you are lucky to get any connection at all)

AT&T
$23 for single channel ISDN (64k), $40 / mo. line charges. (128k ISDN unavailable)

Various
$23 for 33.6k (on a good day) dial-up

Must be nice to not be limited by the above choices.

Re:geh

[CastrTroy]

Yeah. Seems this report isn't based on what's available, it's based on what people actually have. So therefore, in the northeast, where people tend to be more well off, on average, that people would have faster internet connections, on average. You can probably get 10 mbps plus in any major city in the United States.

Rest of the world

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have comparable statistics for Europe and the relevant parts of Asia?

Re:Rest of the world

[aadvancedGIR]

In french urban areas, the standard ADSL is 24Mb/s ATM (8 to 18Mb/s real TCP BW) for 29 to 39E/Mo (with unlimited phone and taxes included), but in a few major cities, 100Mb/s cable is being deployed and sold for the same price.

Only 6.8Mbps?

[adnonsense]

I live on the East Coast (of Japan) and have a 100Mbps-rated optical fibre connection. Though the fastest I've got out of it is a piddling 87Mbps.

Muahaha.

Re:Only 6.8Mbps?

[whtmarker]

I live on the East Coast (of Japan) and have a 100Mbps-rated optical fibre connection. Though the fastest I've got out of it is a piddling 87Mbps.

Muahaha.

We are talking median speed. If you and your 5 neighbors have speeds of 1,1,2,3 and 87 your median speed is 2Mbps.

flawed test

[spectrokid]

This test is the same like those websites where you can test your download speed. They are all flawed in that they don't take your subscription into account. If you have somebody who subscribed for a cheapass 512/512 ADSL, he pulls the average down. Those tests should be limited to those who pay for "all you can get". Otherwise it tells more about a states economical position then about their internet access.

Re:flawed test

[MightyYar]

They are all flawed in that they don't take your subscription into account.

It depends who's using the list. If I'm designing web pages, I want to know what people in my target demographic HAVE, not what they can get. If it's a penis size competition, then I question the study's usefulness. Besides, we have the Olympics for that - and China has the biggest gold dick. Though the US has true melting pot of total dicks.

Interestingly, all of these states are densely populated. From Wikipedia:
Rhode Island ranked 2
Delaware ranked 6
New Jersey ranked 1
Virginia ranked 14
Massachusetts ranked 3

The only think close to an outlier there is Virginia, which is still densely populated over near Washington - which would actually be number 1 if it were a state.

I guess if I lived in number 4 Connecticut or number 5 Maryland, I'd want to know what was up!

Re:flawed test

[Alien Being]

My comcast connection just did 15.5 Mbit/s on the speedmatters test but it's just the result of comcast's traffic shaping policy. For a sustained transfer, the speed would be half that.

Re:flawed test

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not traffic shaping, that's "Powerboost". They are giving you 2-3x your subscribed speed for the first 15 seconds of download.

Duh

[Wellington Grey]

East Coast. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps) and Delaware (6.7Mbps) have the fastest, and nearly triple the national median download speed of 2.3Mbps. Rounding out the Top 5 states are New Jersey (5.8Mbps), Virginia (5Mbps) and Massachusetts (4.6Mbps).

The states with the slowest median download speeds primarily are located in the Midwestern or Western regions of the United States, including Idaho (1.3Mbps), Wyoming (1.3Mbps), Montana (1.3Mbps) and North Dakota (1.2Mbps); Alaska had the slowest download speed (0.8Mbps). I

Is anyone surprised that small, densely populated states have higher download speeds than large, sparsely populated ones? It's the same argument that comes up every time worldwide broadband speeds are discussed: small and dense = easier to wire.

-Grey

check this out:

[amnezick]

In Romania UPC gives 20mbps for ~30$/mo ... and it is considered a developing country.

so far behind

[sam_paris]

Two years ago, when I lived in Paris, I got 20Mbit. Now I live in New York and get more like 4Mbit.

Yep, the world's richest country is years behind in technology infrastructure..

Re:so far behind

[TheRaven64]

It's the population density, idiot! It's easier for France to have better broadband because the people are all close together! Japan is even faster because everyone in Japan lives in Tokyo which has a really big population density! You can't compare Paris to somewhere sparsely populated like New York!

No, wait...

We have 50 Mbps fiber in Utah

[GiovanniZero]

The study obviously wasn't that thorough. We have Fiber in utah that gives you 50 Mbps UP and down for $80/mo. It's a helluva lot cheaper and better than Verizon fios.

I'm curious if anyone beats the Cincinnati Area

[shdowhawk]

So far it seems that the fastest AND most affordable internet (combo) here in the states is available in the Cincinnati area (that I've personally seen). It's got 3 major cities within about 1.5 hours, one of the busiest airports in the mid-west (I'm still EST time zone), a few major train rails and highways 70,71 and 75 all very near by. This makes it a prime location for major companies, except that there aren't THAT many (proctor and gamble is here for example).

I mention this because there aren't too many nerdy types like me out here.. except that they set up the broadband out here to handle major *potential* commercial needs.

So here I sit paying $50 a month for "20 meg download" (which is literally about 2.4-2.5 megabytes per second at maxed connection). That's the upgraded package. Normally it's $40 for "10 meg download"... but 10$ more for double the connection? Easy choice for me! What is interesting is that my speeds actually can hit that through usenet / bittorrents.

Just curious, do these speeds at that low of a price exist anywhere else out there for that cheap? I've not yet heard of that elsewhere. I use Insight Broadband. Note: Internet speeds are great, but the commercials and customer service / "pay-by-internet" really really suck.

Duh.

[clone53421]

Al Gore was born in Washington D.C. so obviously the internet is fastest on the east coast. The packets don't have to travel as far to reach him.

Obviously...

[Quixote]

RI can be covered by a handful of WiFi APs , so that's no surprise.... ;-)

Oblig Matrix...

[gandhi_2]

What good is a phone call...if youâ(TM)re unable to speak?

I'm glad someone has 6.8 Mbs...just hope they don't actually use it. DPI, caps, throttling....these speeds only apply if you use them for services the telco wants you to use them on.

Millions in gov't subsidies and right-of-ways thru your property and all I got was this lousy duopoly.

hmmm

[nomadic]

I get about 756k in Miami for $10 a month. I could go faster I guess, but why bother? When I went from 2400 baud to 44k baud, that was really cool. When I went from 44k baud to cable modem, that was really cool. Any incremental increase after that is eh.

What competition

[E IS mC(Square)]

What is that competition you are talking about? For last three years, I do not have any choice other than comcast for "high speed internet". And this is central NJ - probably the largest urban sprawl in the whole freaking world.

"High speed"

[mrbah]

I live 5 minutes away from MAE-East so you'd think internet access would cost less here, but I'm paying $60 per month for 15/2. I'd be willing to bet that the recent surge in advertised speeds has more to do with marketing than capacity.

At some point a few years ago ISPs realized that most web services don't have the bandwidth on their end to serve lots of users with 15 megabit connections, so they'd never actually have to provide all that bandwidth. They decided they were going to use speed purely as a marketing gimmick and started selling "15 megabit" connections with no capacity to back them up. That's why they hate BitTorrent so much -- it forces them to deliver the product they advertise (what an insane concept!). They oversell bandwidth by a factor of 100 and then turn around and label people who actually use the capacity they pay for as "bandwidth hogs". It's pitiful.

Jersey?

[Baavgai]

I live in Jersey. If the level of service here is considered to be in the Top 5, the rest of you lot are screwed.

You mean gangsta rap lies?!?

[philspear]

I don't understand this at all. Tupac said "Let's show these fools how we do it on the west side, cause you and I know it's the best side." All this talk about west coast is the best coast, now you're trying to tell me east side is better? That doesn't even rhyme! How do you expect me to believe you?

Re:Getting around FIOS Limitations

[jweller]

call fios, get them to turn on the ethernet jack at the ONT, and run your own router instead of the piece of crap actiontec router they give you. then just do port redirects. also check out noip.com