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Average Broadband Speed in US Rises Above 50 Mbps For First Time (techcrunch.com)
Internet speeds are getting faster in the United States, especially in cities such as Kansas City, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, and Phoenix, according to a new Speedtest Market Report. The report, by Ookla's popular service, found that fixed broadband customers saw the biggest jump in performance this year with download speeds achieving an average of over 50Mbps for the first time ever. The result marks a 40 percent increase since July 2015. From a TechCrunch report: That average, 54.97 megabits per second is 42 percent higher than the same period last year, and upload jumped even more -- 18.88 is 51 percent higher year over year. This is all based on the 8 million or so daily tests conducted on Speedtest's website and apps, by the way, so the data is pretty sound. Comcast Xfinity took the honors for fastest speed on average, but its 125 megabits wasn't that much higher than the competition: Cox with 118 and Spectrum with 114. [...] On mobile, Verizon and T-Mobile are tied for first place with 21 megabits and change download speed on average, though the latter beats the competition by a long shot with upload speeds averaging 11.59 megabits. Poor Sprint, though.
I and my neighbors are nowhere near 50mb, I have the fastest and it is just 3mb's
I'm not surprised. Time Warner, the largest provider in the states has been rolling out decent upgrades recently. I'm in Kentucky (not typically the best availability) and am at 300/20 mbps as of this year. Not sure if this is a trend with other ISPs
Yes, it absolutely has to do with Google. Otherwise they would just amortize the older DOCSIS infrastructure over more years and only upgrade to avoid equipment failure. Just because new tech is available doesn't mean there is any reason to deploy it if you have no competitors. In the telcos case they did fiber projects in order to get grant money, and Verizon sold off their fiber business to Frontier after the grant money ran low. I've seen other smaller fiber operators setting up shop because the incumbents aren't interested in upgrading their networks. This usually works out with the incumbent purchasing the small operator and driving the price back up, but Google is the first one I've seen that AT&T etc can't afford to buy out.
The Akamai State of the Internet Q1 2016 has a US average Internet bandwidth of 15 Mbps, which is far more believable.
I agree that there are plenty of people in the US with 50 Mbps+ (I have that myself), but there are still a lot of people on the end of long DSL loops who will never get higher than 5 Mbps.