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Sandy, Utah Tops US Cities For Broadband Speed

Posted by timothy on from the short-hop-to-awesome-slc-library dept.

darthcamaro writes "If you want to live in the city with the fastest average broadband connection speed in the US, you have to move to Utah. According to Akamai's latest State of the Internet Report, Sandy, Utah is at the top of the list for US cities with the fastest average broadband speeds, with an average connection speed of 33,464 Kbps (33.5 Mbps). Overall in the US, the average broadband connection speed in the third quarter of 2009 came in at 3.9 Mbps, down by 2.4 percent on a year-over-year basis, but that's not a major cause for concern in Akamai's view. 'The overall year-over-year decline in the US average connection speed was relatively minor,' report author David Belson, director of market intelligence at Akamai Technologies said. 'The larger year-over-year sample base may have contributed to the decline, especially as mobile usage grows.'"

3 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Who cares about speed? by ThreeGigs · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Seriously, once you get to 1 mbit, web browsing is about as good as it gets. Like blinking twice as fast, you simply don't notice.
    Unless you're into YouTube HD, in which case 4 mbit will be noticeable. I get my television channels delivered on a 4~5 mbit connection. Now, I can see a reason for speed with online backups, etc., but unless you're torrenting, what does your top speed really matter?

    You want a car analogy? Where's the metric on which country has the fastest average top-speed per capita? Does it really matter?

    What I want to know is, exactly how many people could watch the Superbowl if it was ONLY delivered via the internet. Who cares how fast the last mile is if the web servers and backbone infrastructure are way, way, WAY oversubscribed?

    It all just seems like a lot of to-do over something that's not so terribly important.

    1. Re:Who cares about speed? by HeronBlademaster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      One would assume someone going by "ThreeGigs" would want a faster connection ;)

      When I buy a new game on Steam, for example, I don't want to wait for the 7GB download on a 1Mbps connection. (15.93 hours assuming I can saturate the connection.) If I have a 12Mbps connection instead, I only have to wait 1.33 hours instead.

      But even if you reject that use-case (and anything vaguely similar), try having a family with two adults and three kids, all using computers and TV-over-IP and VoIP, on a single 1Mbps connection, and tell me if 1Mbps is still acceptable.

  2. Re:Meanwhile... by Toonol · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, can we please try to remember that this Internet thing is a global medium?

    ...perhaps at the same time, we can try to remember that Slashdot is an American site, and the majority of readers are American.