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The Fastest ISPs In the US
adeelarshad82 writes "PCMag recently put Internet browsing speeds to the test to see which ISP was the fastest. The results were based on a quarter million tests run between May 1, 2009, and April 30, 2010, by more than 6,000 users. The tests were carried out using SurfSpeed, which takes into account the complete, real-world download time of a web page to a browser. According to the results, Verizon's FiOS took the top spot as the nation's fastest ISP, with a SurfSpeed score of 1.23 Mbps. Interestingly though, of all the regions where Verizon's FiOS is available, its dominance is only seen in the northeast and the west, whereas cable service from Cox and Comcast won out in the southern region. Moreover, cable through Cox and Optimum Online beat AT&T's fiber optic service in the nationwide results, with SurfSpeeds of 1.14Mbps, 1.12Mbps, and 1.06Mbps respectively. The worst results mostly consisted of DSL providers, bottoming out at 544 Kbps from Frontier and going up to 882Kbps by Earthlink. Other interesting facts noted in the test were that broadband penetration was highest in Rhode Island and lowest in Mississippi, while the average Internet bill was highest in Delaware and lowest in Arkansas."
They are the nation's leaders in S's and I's
Yes, you can buy higher speed and thus invalidate the 'findings' of the article... Which is really just self-promotion with a fancy title to attract attention.
I was kinda disappointed that the article doesn't address maximum speed, or average speed amongst all "5mbps" connections, instead it lumps in DSL, Cable, and Fiber and says "HEY LoOk! Fiber is usually faster!!"
What this is really testing is "How much speed do Americans purchase, by region,"... it's just.. almost.. completely useless... except for a few statistical data points that are not frequently mentioned (broadband penetration by state).. We're comparing ISP by what the end-users paid for, as opposed to what end users CAN pay for (i.e. the limit of the technology)... or, as an alternative test, they could have tested Like-speed connections average performance across carriers, but instead they are grouping DSL, Fiber, and Cable..... and ignoring that some people pay $20 for internet while others want to pay $50 (for semi-basic home internet service) and claiming an ISP is "The best" because they have more users that spend more money on internet. (or they have less users but much higher speed to result in the same data skewing of results).
So yeah, Metrics, IMO, are mostly crap. And Mississippi can pull ahead of every state in this 'survey' simply by spending an extra $5... hell for $10 extra you can probably get speeds 5 times faster then most of the United States!