5 ms·

Enjoying that 25Mbps internet speed, America?

27 points by LinuxBender 7y ago

some346 7y ago
What's with the title suggesting slow internet speed relating to unhappiness? It's a uk website, I can't imagine how many Americans would actually see the article. Writing about some other countries' problems doesn't solve your own.
fredsanford 7y ago
About as much as you're enjoying your Brexit I'd guess.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
siphon22 7y ago
Oi, you got a license for posting that article, Brit?
wincy 7y ago
I mean considering the US is 2,959,064.44 square miles and UK is 93,628, I’d say we’re doing pretty good for having 30x the area and only 5x the population. I’m greatly enjoying posting this from my Google Fiber gigabit connection, thanks.
- flukus 7y ago
  (Total land area/population) is only be relevant if telecom infrastructure were rolled out in a uniform grid pattern across the entire country. Most of the population lives in a much smaller area.
  - rhino369 7y ago
    Sure, but American urban and suburban areas are less dense than European urban and suburban areas. American sprawling metro areas have much larger installation costs because you have to run more fiber to hit each home. If you compare American options to other large anglosphere countries with sprawling cities and suburbs (Canada and Australia), we do all right in comparison.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  Australia is 2,969,898 square miles and 1/13 the population of the US. I still don't think our internet should be so slow because 85% of our population lives within 50km of the coast (in 2001, probably more now). Our "average fixed broadband" speed is 33Mbit. I'm really jealous of your fibre. The fastest residential speed available where I live, in a major city centre, is 100Mbit. I'm considering moving to NZ.
  - gingabriska 7y ago
    When I lived in NZ, I used to pay $40 a month for 250mbps up and down.
    - brokenmachine 7y ago
      Very tempting. I've seen posts from people with 1Gbit, but I don't know how much it cost.
- rasz 7y ago
  How about NY? or even just Manhattan? lets say 1st Ave. Pretty dense, populated area right? Wanna guess your ISP and speeds availability there?
  - wincy 7y ago
    Nobody lives there though. It's far too crowded.
  - CryptoBanker 7y ago
    Both Verizon and Spectum and possibly RCN offer Gigabit up/down speeds in the NYC area now and have done so for the last 3 years
    - rasz 7y ago
      what area of NYC exactly? because 1st Ave you have a "choice" of DSL or Spectrum Business _Cable_. Heart of industrialized USA, world finance center, and lets not forget "Manhattan's population density is 66,940 people per square mile (25,846/km²), highest of any county in the United States." "New York Votes to Kick Spectrum Cable Out of the State" https://fortune.com/2018/07/29/spectrum-communications-kicked-out-new-york/ https://fortune.com/2018/07/29/spectrum-communications-kicke... "New York City sues Verizon for not completing citywide fiber network" https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/nyc-sues-verizon/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/nyc-sues-verizon/
rayiner 7y ago
The article is comparing apples and oranges. The 25 Mbps “FCC” figure is reporting the fastest speeds offered in each census block. This is a really dumb measure for broadband speeds. In particular, every area served by DSL will have close-in customers who can get 25 Mbps, but many who can get only a fraction of that. But that’s the measure the FCC asks for, and has used since long before the current administration. The 6.3 Mbps figure, by contrast, appears to be an average of 380,000 consumer-initiated Google speed test runs, geo-located to census blocks by IP address. It’s not reporting maximums, and it’s also not clear whether any attempt was made to narrow the results to exclude wireless internet connections from the average. According to Akamai, as of 2017 25 Mbps average speed would put you as the #2 fastest internet in the world, just after South Korea: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... I don’t think anyone is claiming Georgia has the fastest internet in the world. The article’s sweeping claims about “America” as a whole don’t seem justified based on a study done in Georgia. Ookla has the US at #7 worldwide for fixed broadband speeds: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed. Akamai has it in the top 10 (see above). The Ookla data probably is skewed upward, assuming people doing speed tests probably have faster than average Internet, but the Akamai data should be very reliable, being based on way more data points than this Google speeds test survey.
ezoe 7y ago
> The official US government definition of broadband is 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. Seriously? That's a broadband definition of 20 years ago. When ADSL was introduced. But now is the optic fiber era. My guts feeling definition is at least 100Mbps both way simultaneously. I'm enjoying consistent 400Mbps at daylight, 300Mbps at night.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  Honest question: What...on...earth...could you possibly do with that? I have 50Mbps and feel like that's kind of absurd. Netflix recommends 25Mbps for streaming 4K video. [1] So....streaming a dozen 4K movies simultaneously? Sub-minute downloads of entire OS images? [2] [1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 [2] https://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu/#ubuntu-19-04-vbox https://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu/#ubuntu-19-04-vbox
  - kingludite 7y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5y4ysq/largest_torrent_you_have_ever_seendownloadedseeded/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5y4ysq/largest... And you can load news websites that "need" 2000 assets in less than 2 minutes. I think that is mostly it, so that you can suffer more advertisement in higher resolution.
  - beauzero 7y ago
    RDP works better for one. I regularly connect with my phone because my 4G connection is better. Out of 4 people in our house 3 work remotely. One requires HD quality upload throughout the day. DSL took a complaint to the FCC to get hooked up. We are about 40 minutes drive from the Atlanta airport about 15 yards from a rural 2 lane "highway"...the State of Georgia's designation not ours. My mother lives on a reservation in Montana, where nobody thought it was profitable to purchase the co-op...they have 100Mbps vs. our 12-15Mbps in ground.
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      That makes sense. IDK how RDP performs, but high res, low compression video could theoretically consume a hundred Mbps.

27 points by LinuxBender 7y ago

What's with the title suggesting slow internet speed relating to unhappiness? It's a uk website, I can't imagine how many Americans would actually see the article. Writing about some other countries' problems doesn't solve your own.

fredsanford 7y ago

About as much as you're enjoying your Brexit I'd guess.

dang 7y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

siphon22 7y ago

Oi, you got a license for posting that article, Brit?

wincy 7y ago

I mean considering the US is 2,959,064.44 square miles and UK is 93,628, I’d say we’re doing pretty good for having 30x the area and only 5x the population. I’m greatly enjoying posting this from my Google Fiber gigabit connection, thanks.

flukus 7y ago
(Total land area/population) is only be relevant if telecom infrastructure were rolled out in a uniform grid pattern across the entire country. Most of the population lives in a much smaller area.
- rhino369 7y ago
  Sure, but American urban and suburban areas are less dense than European urban and suburban areas. American sprawling metro areas have much larger installation costs because you have to run more fiber to hit each home. If you compare American options to other large anglosphere countries with sprawling cities and suburbs (Canada and Australia), we do all right in comparison.
brokenmachine 7y ago
Australia is 2,969,898 square miles and 1/13 the population of the US. I still don't think our internet should be so slow because 85% of our population lives within 50km of the coast (in 2001, probably more now). Our "average fixed broadband" speed is 33Mbit. I'm really jealous of your fibre. The fastest residential speed available where I live, in a major city centre, is 100Mbit. I'm considering moving to NZ.
- gingabriska 7y ago
  When I lived in NZ, I used to pay $40 a month for 250mbps up and down.
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    Very tempting. I've seen posts from people with 1Gbit, but I don't know how much it cost.
rasz 7y ago
How about NY? or even just Manhattan? lets say 1st Ave. Pretty dense, populated area right? Wanna guess your ISP and speeds availability there?
- wincy 7y ago
  Nobody lives there though. It's far too crowded.
- CryptoBanker 7y ago
  Both Verizon and Spectum and possibly RCN offer Gigabit up/down speeds in the NYC area now and have done so for the last 3 years
  - rasz 7y ago
    what area of NYC exactly? because 1st Ave you have a "choice" of DSL or Spectrum Business _Cable_. Heart of industrialized USA, world finance center, and lets not forget "Manhattan's population density is 66,940 people per square mile (25,846/km²), highest of any county in the United States." "New York Votes to Kick Spectrum Cable Out of the State" https://fortune.com/2018/07/29/spectrum-communications-kicked-out-new-york/ https://fortune.com/2018/07/29/spectrum-communications-kicke... "New York City sues Verizon for not completing citywide fiber network" https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/nyc-sues-verizon/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/nyc-sues-verizon/

rayiner 7y ago

The article is comparing apples and oranges. The 25 Mbps “FCC” figure is reporting the fastest speeds offered in each census block. This is a really dumb measure for broadband speeds. In particular, every area served by DSL will have close-in customers who can get 25 Mbps, but many who can get only a fraction of that. But that’s the measure the FCC asks for, and has used since long before the current administration. The 6.3 Mbps figure, by contrast, appears to be an average of 380,000 consumer-initiated Google speed test runs, geo-located to census blocks by IP address. It’s not reporting maximums, and it’s also not clear whether any attempt was made to narrow the results to exclude wireless internet connections from the average. According to Akamai, as of 2017 25 Mbps average speed would put you as the #2 fastest internet in the world, just after South Korea: https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... I don’t think anyone is claiming Georgia has the fastest internet in the world. The article’s sweeping claims about “America” as a whole don’t seem justified based on a study done in Georgia. Ookla has the US at #7 worldwide for fixed broadband speeds: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#fixed. Akamai has it in the top 10 (see above). The Ookla data probably is skewed upward, assuming people doing speed tests probably have faster than average Internet, but the Akamai data should be very reliable, being based on way more data points than this Google speeds test survey.

ezoe 7y ago

> The official US government definition of broadband is 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up. Seriously? That's a broadband definition of 20 years ago. When ADSL was introduced. But now is the optic fiber era. My guts feeling definition is at least 100Mbps both way simultaneously. I'm enjoying consistent 400Mbps at daylight, 300Mbps at night.

paulddraper 7y ago
Honest question: What...on...earth...could you possibly do with that? I have 50Mbps and feel like that's kind of absurd. Netflix recommends 25Mbps for streaming 4K video. [1] So....streaming a dozen 4K movies simultaneously? Sub-minute downloads of entire OS images? [2] [1] https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13444 [2] https://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu/#ubuntu-19-04-vbox https://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu/#ubuntu-19-04-vbox
- kingludite 7y ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5y4ysq/largest_torrent_you_have_ever_seendownloadedseeded/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/5y4ysq/largest... And you can load news websites that "need" 2000 assets in less than 2 minutes. I think that is mostly it, so that you can suffer more advertisement in higher resolution.
- beauzero 7y ago
  RDP works better for one. I regularly connect with my phone because my 4G connection is better. Out of 4 people in our house 3 work remotely. One requires HD quality upload throughout the day. DSL took a complaint to the FCC to get hooked up. We are about 40 minutes drive from the Atlanta airport about 15 yards from a rural 2 lane "highway"...the State of Georgia's designation not ours. My mother lives on a reservation in Montana, where nobody thought it was profitable to purchase the co-op...they have 100Mbps vs. our 12-15Mbps in ground.
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    That makes sense. IDK how RDP performs, but high res, low compression video could theoretically consume a hundred Mbps.