Speed Report Finds T-Mobile and Xfinity Providing Fastest Mobile and Broadband Internet in US (geekwire.com)

Mobile and fixed broadband internet speeds in the U.S. are improving, but not all carriers and providers are created equal and not all areas of the country are benefitting equally from fast speeds. From a report: Those are the findings according to a new market report from Speedtest by Ookla out of Seattle, which relied on data it captured from user-initiated tests during the first half of 2017. And for customers using T-Mobile for mobile internet and Comcast Xfinity for broadband, the results are especially good. Speedtest credits infrastructure investments and upgrades as well as increased affordability of higher tiered packages for the fact that fast broadband keeps getting faster. The average download speed in the U.S. over fixed broadband during Q1 to Q2 was 64.17 Mbps (ranking 15th in the world) and average upload speed was 22.79 Mbps (24th in the world). Xfinity is the top provider when it comes to Speed Score -- which incorporates low-end, median and top-end performance for both download and upload speed -- with a score of 69.58. Speedtest says that Comcast has been aggressively seeding the market over the past year with advanced modems capable of delivering a more consistent experience for customers. The cable provider has also been increasing the amount of DOCSIS 3.1 channels in order to deliver faster speeds, according to the report.

Comments

Tech site and terminology

[grasshoppa]

I can understand regular media using the term "fast" to classify broadband characteristics, but as a tech site can't we do better? The term "speed" doesn't really make sense, especially when applied to bandwidth ( as is the case here ).

Using the same definition, a minivan full of thumb drives is "fast" in that it can deliver gigabytes of bandwidth, but I don't know that anyone would actually want to use such a connection.

An internet connection can be measured by 3 main metrics; latency, bandwidth and reliability ( well, and media if you want to get technical ). Perhaps we could start using that here?

Comcast cheats

[darthyoshiboy]

I can hit a Speedtest.net server even when my general internet is dead with Comcast. They've obviously got an OOB route for Speedtest.net that allows that traffic to flow regardless of the actual status of the network. It also somehow always manages to get my full allotment of bandwidth even when I have several streaming video services running with Steam downloads which should be taking a chunk out of what can be used to hit Speedtest.net.