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Millions In US Still Living Life In Internet Slow Lane (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the loading-bar dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Millions of Americans still have extremely slow Internet speeds, a new Federal Communications Commission report shows. While the FCC defines broadband as download speeds of 25Mbps, about 47.5 million home or business Internet connections provided speeds below that threshold. Out of 102.2 million residential and business Internet connections, 22.4 million offered download speeds less than 10Mbps, with 5.8 million of those offering less than 3Mbps. About 25.1 million connections offered at least 10Mbps but less than 25Mbps. 54.7 million households had speeds of at least 25Mbps, with 15.4 million of those at 100Mbps or higher. These are the advertised speeds, not the actual speeds consumers receive. Some customers will end up with slower speeds than what they pay for. Upload speeds are poor for many Americans as well. While the FCC uses 3Mbps as the upload broadband standard, 16 million households had packages with upload speeds less than 1Mbps. Another 27.2 million connections were between 1Mbps and 3Mbps, 30.1 million connections were between 3Mbps and 6Mbps, while 29 million were at least 6Mbps. The Internet Access Services report released last week contains data as of December 31, 2015. The 11-month gap is typical for these reports, which are based on information collected from Internet service providers. The latest data is nearly a year old, so things might look a bit better now, just as the December 2015 numbers are a little better than previous ones.

2 of 209 comments (clear)

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  2. Re:between 3 and 10 Mb/s is slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Although i agree that speeds should be much faster considering the amount we are charged, people need to recognize that THEY are part of the problem.

    my Mother-in-law streaming Hulu

    She should be watching television, not clogging up the intertubes

    my kids gaming while playing Youtube videos

    make them go outside and play

    my wife facetiming with the grandkid

    the telephone works just great for talking to people