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The Fastest ISPs In the US
adeelarshad82 writes "For a second year in a row PCMag partnered with Speedtest to find out the fastest ISPs in the U.S. The results were a product of 110,000 tests ran between January 1, 2012 and September 19, 2012. Collecting data for both download and upload speeds for each test, Speednet was able to calculate an index score for a better one-to-one comparison, where downloads counted for 80 percent and uploads 20 percent. Moreover, rather than testing the upload and download speed of a single file, the tests used multiple broadband threads to measure the total capacity of the 'pipe.' While the results at the nationwide level were fairly obvious with Verizon FiOS crushing its opposition, the results at regional level were a lot more interesting and competitive."
I at least think my ISP sends their bills the fastest. Not sure about the "pipe" speed though.
In addition Midcontinent has prices that aren't bad. Good bandwidth at a good price in a city with a population under 500. I would have never believed it before moving here.
As I have said repeatedly on here, in my area I have 2 choices: Comcast or Verizon. To get the lowest level of naked broadband service, 15/5, I would have to pay $75/month. From there, it's only how much they can squeeze out of you for minor increments in speed.
Despite this, the U.S. consistently ranks in the middle to the bottom in terms of speed, but always at the top in price.
So for all the talk about broadband penetration, who has what speed, etc, until real competition is injected into the fray or the law about one provider allowing another to use their lines at reasonable rates is enforced, surveys like this are relatively meaningless. If the cost of getting this supposed speed is too high, why bother?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
some cable ISPs here are known for unthrottling connections as soon as the URL includes something like /speedtest/ - e.g. NetCologne
FIRST POST, CHECK It BItCHES
Speed is not as relevant as it once was. Caps are the big problem now for residential service. The providers are offering speeds in the 10's of megabits per second, but the caps are set so low that the service has no value for the money. There needs to be more competition in residential broadband or more regulation if there is not sufficient competition. The only way out of the caps is to order business service in my area (which I have done, but at $119/mo is quite expensive).
Both AT&T and Cox have caps in place for residential customers in my area. Cox has no cap (yet) for business customers.
If it can only be solved by regulation in certain areas of the country, then a moratorium on dividends or a 100% corporate tax on dividends of companies in areas with little competition might provide the necessary incentives to change things. Communications companies pay ridiculously high dividends to shareholders, and I'm convinced this is one of the roots of the problem. This money could be redirected over the long term to build a better Internet in this country, and the communications companies would stand to benefit from it.
There has been talk recently of the FCC investigating the cap thresholds, but that is just going to lead to a court battle in my opinion (at least in the past it has)
Where I live, I have two main options:
1) Verizon DSL at 768kbps
3) Time Warner at 3Mbps, 10Mbps, 20Mbps or 50Mbps
You can see why I'm happy that Verizon has the fastest internet in my region.
The problem is that Verizon, the only national company providing it to homes in the United States, stopped expanding to new markets a couple of years ago, or at least past the planned footprint. The existing 13.7 million customers get new upgrades (like the new 300Mbps "Quantum" option for $205 a month) and while Verizon expects to grow to 18 million FiOS customers eventually, after that, if you don't have FiOS, you probably never will.
Just sad. Europe and Asia are quickly leaving the U.S. behind. And no one has any plan to do anything about it. From internet pioneer to the back of the pack.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
If this damn page would load fast enough...
I'd like to see $/per Mbit. That would be a way more interesting regional graph.
Speaking of fiber, what about AT&T? The company did not make the top 15. In fact, the fiber-based AT&T U-verse service got an index of 7.9, putting it at number 22.
I'm really not surprised by this. One of the worst features of U-verse is that the tv and internet share the same bandwidth. After a little at home testing I found that my '18mbs' connection dropped by almost 6mbs per HD channel we were watching or recording. So while you pay for both, you can really only use one at a time. I promptly dropped their cable. The most frustrating fact is that we can't get Fios in my neighborhood. When we called to set it up while moving in the gentleman kindly informed me that if AT&T services my area Fios will not. Still trying to figure out how that is legal...
Don't forget that Verizon FiOS is tiered, so not everyone is going to be on 300Mbps, in fact, very few customers will be.
It's still damning that very few customers can afford higher tiers when it doesn't cost any more to run than lower tiers.
Not by the U.S. standard of left and right. In the U.S., the central planners are left wing, opponents of central planning are right wing. Stalin and Hitler were both big proponents of centrally planned economies.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Or did they just have a crappy route to their test server? If I could make a living in Chattanooga TN and the wife be ok with it, I'd move in a heartbeat. The local city owned electrical company has HTTP on the cheap. Their base service is faster (50mbps symetrical) and cheaper than my base service with Comcrap: https://epbfi.com/enroll/packages/#/
Seriously wish that could happen where I live, but it will never happen. Sad thing is, the available ISPs and speeds are a factor in my choice of domicile. My wife rolls her eyes at that statement, yet she bitches when the internets are slow or don't work; go figure. I've got her on the same page now that we're on Comcrap and shit breaks on occasion. Who said it was impossible to get the wife on your side? I just use logic, point stuff out, and she'll come over to my side on things we disagree on in most cases. I just haven't gotten her on my side when it comes to guns yet, but I haven't made the effort to shoot down her lame arguments with facts yet; no pun intended.
Consider its only in a limited few area's so how can be put under nationwide when its only in a few area's where as charter, comcast, etc are in every state?
Hitler ran the Nazi party. Nazi - translated to English it means National Socialist. That's left of center, son. Stalin was a Communist, that's even farther to the left. Sorry if the truth hurts, but the phrase "right wing authoritarians" - just doesn't scan. It's Socialism where the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few (sorry, Spock.)
Perhaps you fear liberty?
Living in AT&T land, I had their "premium" 6/0.4 DSL service. Then one fine day they poured a slab for the U-verse cabinet at the end of the street. Such a deal, phone/video/Internet! Actually, boys & girls, I only want the Internet. Turns out they suddenly lose interest if they can't sell you TV. Since I don't have a TV in my house it seemed silly to pay extra for crap-vision.
Then they started messing with my DSL service. Change the IP address up to three times a day. Really? You manage your network so poorly you have to re-arrange it that often? Of course not, we just want you to upgrade to our fine U-verse service (with TV, of course.)
Finally they made a decent offer for 18/1.5 service and I snapped it up. It's simply amazing, no - miraculous that my IP address hasn't changed since that day. I have heard they use (nearly) static addresses on U-verse to make it easier to distribute the video. But thank you, AT&T for the miracle in my life! At least, thanks for not messing with my IP address any more.
Grump, and after I spent a few hours writing my own DDNS software to cope with their former animosity...
One thing I notice is that the index rating weights in favor of download speed more than upload. That's IMO misleading. It's OK in a world where people only consume content, but in an environment that includes Skype or Google Voice for telephone and video calls, Google Hangouts, cloud-based storage like Dropbox or Google Drive, workers remoting in to the office using VPNs and remote-desktop software, and mobile devices using WiFi and an Internet connection as an alternative to the regular cellular network, upload bandwidth is becoming as important as download bandwidth. Rating ISP A significantly higher than B when A's upload speed is half of B's and A's downloads are only 20% faster seems to me to be misleading.
Um, that word 'FACT". I do not think it means what you think it means. Anecdote !=fact. Ditto for anything you expect us to believe 'just 'cuz I said so'.
Liberal economists aren't Keynesians (Krugman, for a moderate liberal; socialists for the opposite extreme), there most certainly are valid nonAustrian economic models. IANAE, but it sure seems to me that we're seeing another demonstration of how Austrian pure-play capitalism is as bad an economic model as pure socialism/communism. I prefer social engineering via regulated capitalism: Balance wins handily over either extreme.
That paragraph about gun control is a bread-n-circuses distraction to left/right economic positions, and as such matters as little as abortion (and is certainly not a litmus test for either part).
Everyone pays taxes (so of **course** you are affected by them despite not being a 1%er), but most of us in the US are paying less than we would have during the 50's, 60's, 70's. The social safety net is alive and well in Germany, despite it being the healthiest economy in the developed/1st world. But they're aggressively taxing businesses, then using the proceeds to keep manufacturing in-country.
Giving money to the poor is loaded language. The depression was **solved** by handouts and governmental borrowing/deficit spending (the government giving poor people money and jobs when nobody else would hire due to illiquidity of finances and markets).
Well, that and Hitler.
Likewise, the stimulus worked this time around, although Krugman and other economists are building up plenty of evidence that more would have been better. The US House's Republican plan of Austerity economics aren't helping and seem to be pushing toward rekindling another Recession.
Grants and other 'given' money helps the weak/infirm/old survive with dignity and helps the children of the poor and helps people bootstrap themselves out of poverty. Tax breaks for the wealthy, OTOH don't trickle down nearly as well as Reagan and the Heritage Foundation pretend.
Government inefficiency is a bogus meme: Social Security has repeatedly been analyzed and scored better than private pensions for their operational efficiency. Ditto many other government programs -- you've fallen for a conservative talking point there. As for them being the least efficient means of putting money into an economy, nothing could be further from the truth: A $1 tax increase diminishes your personal spending less than a buck, since you (as a healthy middle-class wonk) were investing/saving part of it. OTOH, a buck in the hand of anyone near the poverty line gets spent that week. All of it. Every time. By the time that welfare buck cycles twice through local economies (once if it went to WalMart or other corporations that suck the profits out while they pay their staff less than a living wage), it's usually kicking the ass off the fractional buck given to you or me.
As for that founding fathers quote: it's one great man's opinion, taken out of context and across 200+ years. Relying on it as gospel is your most absurd prose of all. I honestly can't imagine a quorum of flaming liberals like our founding fathers liking Washington or Wall Street or most of your other claims.
Ya wanna fix the economy? Change international trade regulations, reinstate a steeper progressive tax structure, and stop spending half our taxes on war. Then, maybe we could stop pretending like the only options for healthcare are the extremes being debated and start emulating nations whose healthcare laws are working better than ours (Frontline did a nice show a few years ago comparing US, Germany, the UK, Japan and another nation's, for reference). Then let's talk seriously about the long term -- we can adjust retirement rules and tax rates (raise the ceiling, set different rules for knowledge workers and blue-collar jobs that literally physically wear out the people doing them by 55 -- the number of unemployable old construction workers at your local homeless shelter sho