The FCC wants
you to help it kill bogus ISPs, and its primary weapon is its
Consumer Broadband Test, released to the world last week. 150,000 people have already done their part, giving a glimpse at some early statistics describing just what the state of American downloadin' looks like. Average download from the Ookla test is a respectable 11.5Mbps and upload is 2.09Mbps, but if you look at the spread of those results a full half of test takers have a rather more pedestrian 4Mbps maximum download. An early map is included below showing results by state but, as
Ars Technica points out, many of the "surprise" dark green entries (like Georgia) have only had a few-thousand respondents thus-far, and you can figure most are in-the-know enthusiasts paying extra to get their digital goods more quickly. It still remains to be seen exactly
what the FCC will do with all these stats, because it doesn't seem to be releasing data tying speeds to ISP just yet. Hopefully that's coming.
posted March 19th 2010 8:29AM
Death to bad ISPs.
@buoy
4 Mbps?? Wow! I only get 2.1 with Bright House.
@buoy
Welp I love Comcast in Colorado. My speeds are a little slow right now at 10 down 10 up (because I'm paying for 30 down 10 up) but, I got a notice in the mail saying they're doing maintenance. Can't wait until it's over so my speeds can go through the roof again...
http://www.speedtest.net/result/754041488.png
@PlatinumSkeet Ya, I have Xfinity, and it's 6 dn 2 up, where are these 100 dn they are boasting about??
@buoy
Is it just me ... or won't this skew the numbers to a higher than normal average?
Most people who would take this test are probably ones that actually know what ISP means. And these are usually the people who go after the higher broadband speeds, right? Or does this tell the FCC what you're getting compared to what you're actually paying for?
Oh, and why can't they just ask (pay?) Speedtest.net for such figures?
@PlatinumSkeet Ouch, Comcast needs to bring 100Mbit to everyone cheap :)
http://results.speedtest.comcast.net/result/35106542.png 100Mbit on a good day
Man where I live there are 4 wireless ISPs. All bad.
Oh great, my state is all dark green like... but my ISP squirms with 'trying' to stream 720p video?
@bazookafx3
It all depends on what your paying for buddy.
ISP bring broadband to my house plz!! 50 Mbps stops a mile from my house. Stuck with satelitte.
@Ezye1313
Just get a roll of Cat5e and a couple Switchs & Generators and make your own little network on the side of the road....
Iowa fails as usual, I actually thought we'd be on the lowest bracket, those darn kids from Des Moines who get 20mbps from Qwest must have bumped up our numbers. We got 2 ISP's, Qwest which speeds vary from house to house, and Mediascam, which service is down more then up, and I refuse to pay for their ridiculous 7mbps because it never runs at that advertised speed. Not to mention their customer service does their best to ignore you.
@Dandmcd You can get 20 mbps with Qwest in des moines? yeeaah I doubt it, Mediacomm still has a monopoly around here (sadly) though Mediacomm does offer a "20 Mbps" connection.
@Brokinarrow
Supposedly a couple small areas around the area get fiber optic from Qwest, but it is only a very small section near the Qwest central hub. They have fiber in Iowa City too, but again, only a few select people seem to be able to get it, and even then you pay $99 for it and it never runs at advertised speeds.
I guess I'm lucky then. I get about 40 mbps down, but I do have to pay quite a bit for it!
P.S. no caps either!!!
They need to customize this better, All of Virginia can't be green
@grydlok yeah i hardly ever recycle
@grydlok I'm sure their map is more exact, but it'd be nice if they shared.
my test yielded 33544kbps. wait! is that right? i have 15mb cable modem service but...
hmmm..
@seamonkey420 I'm on Timer Warner, and my speeds in tests were way over what I pay for as well. I think it might be the turboboost thing, cause I never get speeds as fast as I do in tests.
AT&T has really pushed their U-Verse service here in the Atlanta area - and just recently increased all the speeds across their line. I'm payin ~$50/month for 18Mbps.
I just wish Verizon would bring FIOS here to give em some competition.
@Jyncus
I wish they would bring U-verse out to Snellville, but not here yet. I see all the fiber running out Stone Mountain and up 124 to Lawrenceville, but still not in my neighborhood. Stuck with craptacular 3.8 up .4 down.
It is not that surprising that Georgia is one of the dark green states: Atlanta being the home of the old BellSouth, what was Cingular, and the nodal point of most of the high-speed long distance lines that run through the south. It also helps that ~60% Georgians live in the Atlanta metro area, so this becomes more of a measure of the city than it does the state.
The question, why is my service so lame?
Chris
I find these bandwidth tests to be extremely misleading. Most broadband providers offer an initial "Speed Boost" where your 8Mpbs connection jumps to 30Mbps+ for the first megabyte of data transferred. This easily covers the data transferred by most speed tests. My Comcast connection is down right terrible and yet it consistently benches at 20Mbps. I sure hope the government takes this in to account when reviewing the results.
@jpbeard
You are absolutely correct. The only wait to truly test an internet connection is through streaming data for extended periods of time. The only purpose built testing utility I know that does this is the YouTube speed test.
http://www.youtube.com/my_speed
My Comcast connection is close to 27Mbit on all the speedtests except the youtube one where it shows the truth that it's around 11Mbit.
They should have collected how much people were paying for their service also.
I have AT&T DSL in my college town (U-Verse isn't even an option) and they're pretty good. The uptime is around 95% but my d/l is tops out at 5Mpbs and upload at 400Kbps. However, real-time usage is around 1.5Mbps d/l and 200Kbps upload. It's better than the cable serve here which claims 10 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up but their uptime is around 70% and at night with everyone playing Halo realtime usage drops to the speed of a 56k modem. My neighbors can't even properly load their facebook pages from 9pm-6am on weekends. It's pathetic.
@John52
95% is still kinda low. That's like more than a day's worth of internet being out per month.
70% is like having nine days being without internet per month.
I'd be pissed if my internet dropped below 99%.
@Meekermoloko
Well the service here is undermanned and slow to react. AT&T provides service for the local University as well, which means local consumers often get the shaft on service and upgrades since the University is paying huge $$$ to constantly upgrade and maintain their internet. I wonder if it's the same at other town with local Universities.
I'm pissed that I already live in the state with the best speed. I thought what we had was slow.
@MisterCow
It might be slow, it all depends on who your ISP is, this is why people are confused about this whole US Map diagram thing.
Think about the schools (colleges and universities) in the darker green areas, and these results make sense..
Cali=caltech, USC, uc Berkeley
GA=Georgia tech, Emory
Ma=mit, Harvard
Etc etc...these are the ppl getting the sweet speeds
I know for a fact GA tech speeds are second to the Pentagon
@ac2913: Explain MD, VA, and DE, then. Those are some of the fastest states, yet none of the Ivy Leagues are there.
@ac2913
Don't know if we are second to pentagon but we are pretty fast because ATT corporate is here and cable isp have to compete, I was on att getting 6mb then I went to comcast where I get in my neighborhood 17mb down and 3up (on occasion 25down and 6up). I was offered 50mb download service from a tech the other day because I complained my internet was out for like 16hrs because of maintenance at my neighbors. Really didn't see the point for me to have 50 (probably more like 30) down when all I do is work/school and play xbox live.
@erwos right because only Ivy Leagues have fast internet, right? ::rolleyes::
VA has Virginia Tech, MD has University of Maryland, both big research universities. It also doesn't hurt that FiOS is very popular in the DC Metro area which includes Maryland and Virginia.
The problem with this is that the test doesn't really show SUSTAINED speed. Sure, I get over 25Mb with Comcast, but I have a 16Mb connection.
Until someone can come up with a reliable way to get around "PowerBoost" like technologies, these tests are a lie.
@MRCUR
not to mention that certain ISPs are sure to preference all traffic going to and coming from this test so as to inflate their numbers.
Here in New York City I am paying a extra $10 for a so called "Boost" yet even with a 30Mbps down and 5Mbps up I can rarely see what I am paying for.
@stevebrm
Unless you're gaming or have a lot of downloading going on, you're probably not going to see much of a difference. The internet sites in general are slow since they usually limit the downloading speeds at their end.
I went from 5Mb/s down to 11Mb/s down and didn't really see much of a difference unless I'm streaming HD movies from Amazon or using Skype or something like that. Until the overall internet is sped up, it's not really worth paying for extra speed beyond that ... unless you're a hardcore gamer.
WTF? I never get anywhere close to 10mbps (or 1.25 MB/s) in WA state. Closer to 3mbps (or 0.375 MB/s) more than anything else. Where are they getting these numbers?
hawaii has faster broadband than me?
@Wiggy Fuzz I know right. If your in the contiguous I'd say you have more to complain about, I'm in AK so not suprised we suck, just suprised HI is better. I have uploaded my results using the FCC test. 3.4 Mbps down 0.7 Mbps up. $99 a month 30 GB cap. Pretty sure that is the definition of a bad ISP
So I live in NJ, should I be happy that we're dark green, or upset because this means its the best we're going to get for awhile?
What I hate is the ridiculously slow upload speeds I get. I recently switched from AT&T/Bellsouth/Whatever because in the area I live in, they max out at 3 megs down. Switching to the local cable company gives me 8 (soon to be 10) megs down, for the same price that I was even without a package deal.
On Bellsouth I would max out around 350 kbps, and upload (before it started killing my download speed) was around 20kbps.
On Morris Broadband (cable company) I max out at 920 kbps, which I can sustain aound 850 kbps, but my upload is still only like 45 kbps. I would be fine with that downstream, but 45 kbps up is absolute garbage for file sharing.
Wow I never imagined California to be so far behind VA.
Did anyone see at&t's ad last night supporting the FCC report?
Lol, Maryland beat California. So much for Silicon Valley.
@HurricaneDC
Not too surprising, considering that Maryland is currently sitting on top as the wealthiest state in the US (median household income). Combine that with being able to easily cover most of the state with high speed because of the population density, and FiOS being available for most of us, it really pulls that average up.
Then again, here at work our internet is a joke. .5Mbps shared among 6 people. Yes, you read that right.
@HurricaneDC
same deal as VA here - if its near D.C., its fast. Throws off the actual average. They should really have done this investigation per voter district of county. Yes, way more intensive, but these results are not that accurate.
CenturyLink is crap in Florida...ugh
Understandable that Montana is white, we have 1 ISP in a 150 mile radius.
We pay ~90$ a month for 512kbps...and that's the "fast" connection.