Slashdot Mirror
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 can directly attribute this bump in speed in my town (Austin) to Google Fiber. Before Google announced they were coming to Austin, the absolute fastest consumer-grade connection one could get was 50 Mbits, through TWC. As soon as Google mentioned their intentions to enter Austin with their Fiber service, TWC immediately started offering 100, 200, and even 300 Mbit plans, with plans for a 500 Mbit service level on the horizon. AT&T did something similar with their U-Verse service as well. Hell, I can even get these speeds in the next town over (Buda), where Google hasn't even announced they're going to go into. A little competition goes a long way.
They say this is "broadband" speeds, but broadband was redefined last year to require 25Mbps downloads.
So, someone could be sneaky and say 'oh, those 10 Mbps connections aren't broadband anymore', and you just drop out the lowest numbers, and miraculously the average goes up.
Schools were using this trick by keeping the poorly performing students from taking standardized testing to raise their test averages.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I've been on an ancient Sprint unlimited data plan (true unlimited data - I've used up to 112 GB in a month with no complaints and no throttling) for $50/mo for over a decade now. They had a rough spot with the WiMax bungle, but I stuck with them gambling that they'd pull through. And they have. I almost always have LTE service now in Southern California. TFA lists Sprint's (and AT&T's) LTE coverage as 93% vs Verizon's 98% (then uses a graph whose scale is apparently 90%-100% to exaggerate the difference). It's the LTE coverage which is key. It was really painful when Sprint was down near 50%, but it's actually pretty rare for me to see my phone in 3G mode nowadays.
As for LTE speed, the average of the other carriers is 21.2 Mbps down, 9.3 Mbps up. Sprint's is 15.8 Mbps down, 4.9 Mbps up, or 75% down and 53% up vs the other carriers. Unless you're streaming 4k video to your cell phone, or regularly shoot a lot of videos and insist that they be uploaded to cloud backup immediately, these differences simply don't matter. They're all "fast enough" - they correspond to a few seconds or even a split second difference in most use cases.
The speeds are to the point where consistency (better coverage, fewer dead spots) is a more important factor. And by that metric there's now only a 5% difference between the best and worst mobile carrier in the U.S. Hardly worth the 2x price Verizon wants for service. That's why I gambled and decided not to give up my unlimited plan on Sprint by switching carriers. Once your coverage reaches about 90% (which was where Verizon was at when Sprint was around 50%), you're pretty close to maxed out. There's simply not much more improvement you can make. Whereas Sprint at 50% had a lot of room for possible improvement. (Your experience will vary with location. I hear Sprint still sucks in the Bay Area.)
(And if you're curious, no I'm not a bandwidth hog. My monthly data use is usually down around 1-3 GB. Just every now and then I go on a business trip or vacation, and use my phone as a hotspot so I and my family/friends can get Internet on our laptops and tablets. I'd have to pay $15/GB for overage if I switched to Verizon. The month I used 112 GB would've cost me over $1500. No thanks.)