USA falling behind in Broadband Speed
The WSJ has an interesting article today that shows the USA falling further and further behind the rest of the world in broadband speeds.
The U.S. has fallen behind in speed, too. In the same study, conducted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, the U.S. ranked 15th in the average advertised download speed, at 4.9 megabits a second. That’s slower than the 17.6 megabits a second in France and the 63.6 megabits a second in Japan, which ranks No. 1 in this category. In other words, it takes a little over two minutes to download a movie on iTunes in Japan, compared with almost half an hour in the U.S. The average U.S. download speed is even slower, according to other estimates.
I pay $55.00 a month for “basic” speeds from Comcast. I could get faster if I would also buy my cable TV service from them. This may have been the direction I went when I first moved into my new home 5 years ago. However, Comcast didn’t offer cable or high-speed when I moved in because they didn’t have my new neighborhood “wired” when the development was created. Since I produce videos, uploads speeds are nearly as important as my download speeds. I’m averaging only 43-48 Kbps uploads. I would love to get some of the Japanese speeds here in the USA.
