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US Ranks 28th In the World In Average Wireless Broadband Speeds (dslreports.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from DSLReports: The United States is 28th in terms of wireless broadband data speeds, according to the latest Akamai state of the internet report (pdf, hat tip ReCode). According to the data collected by the company, the United States average mobile broadband speed is now a not-entirely unrespectable 10.7 Mbps. But that speed pales in comparison to the top average speeds being seen in the UK (26 Mbps), Cyprus (24.2 Mbps), Germany (24.1 Mbps), and Finland (21.6 Mbps). The report is quick to note that US carrier efforts to boost speeds via next-generation broadband aren't quite as cutting edge as carrier marketing departments might have you believe. Many U.S. carriers have promised that their own fifth generation (5G) broadband deployments should deliver theoretical speeds up to 1 Gbps as well, but serious deployment isn't expected until 2020 or so. Some of this lagging can be explained away by the United States' mammoth geography, though some of it can also be explained by what, until recently, has been fairly muted but theatrical competition between major carriers.
The subject line is an honest question. It's certainly nice to have faster speeds available, but in terms of everyday usage, I can't think of anything a typical mobile user would do today that would benefit significantly from speeds above about 10Mbps. 1080p streaming from YouTube or Netflix only needs about 2-4Mbps, and HD video streaming is about the heaviest operation I'd expect a typical user to engage in. Maybe download an MP3 or read some e-mails? Do a little web browsing? None of those benefit significantly, and, frankly, many servers throttle downloads anyway, preventing users from benefiting from faster speeds.
Obviously, many of us here can think of reasons we ourselves have for wanting more, such as using your phone as a WiFi hotspot so that you can torrent the latest episode of Game of Thrones on your laptop while sipping a Mai Tai on the beach, but I'm not talking about those sorts of uncommon uses. I'm also NOT saying that "10Mbps is enough for anyone, and no one will ever need more". Clearly our consumption will keep increasing for the foreseeable future, so we obviously need to keep improving our infrastructure.
Even so, I'm honestly curious if there are any common, compelling use cases around today that I'm forgetting about that benefit from faster speeds. If not, then it would suggest that deployment is basically where it should be (at least in terms of mobile) and that there isn't a problem yet.