Akamai: World internet speed increasing except for US

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10434930-94.html

by codexon • 17 years ago

31 24 17 years ago

news.cnet.com

bmalicoat• 17 years ago

I wish that there was highspeed everywhere and more importantly that it wasn't so expensive. However comparing the US to other countries with way fewer square miles to cover and more densely populated areas is unfair. Taking those factors into consideration makes the US's position not so embarrassing. The telco's and ISP's control of the infrastructure though, is still embarrassing and in need of reform.

pyre2• 17 years ago

  Rank  Country        Pop.Density
  ----  -------------  -----------------
    1.  South Korea    493/km^2 (21st)
    2.  Japan          337.4/km^2 (30th)
    3.  Hong Kong      6076.4/km^2 (4th)
    4.  Romania        90/km^2 (104th)
    5.  Sweden         20.6/km^2 (192nd)
    6.  Ireland        73.4/km^2 (??)
    7.  Netherlands    396/km^2 (24th)
    8.  Switzerland    188/km^2 (65th)
    9.  Denmark        127.9/km^2 (78th)
   10.  Czech Republic 132/km2 (77th)
   ...
   18.  United States  32/km^2 (178th)

Sweden manages to be #5 with a smaller population density than the United States.

source: Wikipedia

SamAtt• 17 years ago

I don't dispute the conclusions in this article nor do I think the U.S. is trying hard enough to build its Internet infrastructure. But these comparisons are a little unfair. If you take the top 2 countries in speed (South Korea and Japan) you realize there's a huge space disparity. South Korea has a total area of 38,622 sq mi while Japan has a total of 145,925 sq mi. While on the U.S. side Texas alone is 268,820 sq mi of land while the country itself is 3,794,101 sq mi total.

So yes the U.S. might be a little slower in deploying high speed lines but the effort involved in running cables and building up that infrastructure is far more significant.

DarkShikari• 17 years ago

I see this argument made almost daily despite it being completely invalid.

If it was true, US cities, the high density areas, would have speeds comparable to countries such as Estonia (12mbps), Japan (50+mbps), and so forth. However, US internet sucks, even in the cities. In my experience there is almost no correlation between density and quality of internet. And don't make the argument that it's due to the distance between cities: fiber trunklines cost almost nothing compared to the last-mile costs of wiring thousands of neighborhoods.

What is true is a correlation between competition and quality of internet. Areas with only one provider almost inevitably have terrible service.

The excuse that "US internet is worse because our country is larger" is a cheap cop-out to avoid admitting that our telecommunications infrastructure is in many ways worse than some third-world countries.

ronnier3• 17 years ago

http://www.speedtest.net/result/683977929.png Not bad. I know many around Texas with equivalent speeds.

travisp• 17 years ago

I just did a speed test in Atlanta, GA and got a speed of 25Mb/s according to speedtest.net:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/684004348.png

So it seems that at least some high density areas in the US do have such speeds.

RK2• 17 years ago

What is true is a correlation between competition and quality of internet. Areas with only one provider almost inevitably have terrible service.

Do countries like South Korea and Japan have lots of competition for high speed access (or infrastructure)?

quellhorst• 17 years ago

In some parts of the USA you have excellent bandwidth! Verizon provides me with 50mbps fiber in Dallas. http://www.speedtest.net/result/684079289.png

ascuttlefish• 17 years ago

When I go to that site, it gives me a "Missing License Key Error".

s3graham• 17 years ago

I'm not sure if it's widely true, but my provider (Shaw in Vancouver) does a sneaky thing where they burst me to 25Mb/s downstream for the first few meg of a download, and then put it back to normal (~8Mb/s).

It is useful for some real-life cases, but it also makes speedtest.net tests very mis-representative.

I think the downstream is quite acceptable for what I pay. The upstream is ass though (0.5Mb/s).

Akamai: World internet speed increasing except for US

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