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United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

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Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#31

Post by chadash »

1 Singapore 262.20

2 Hong Kong (SAR) 254.40

3 Monaco 242.89

4 Switzerland 222.00

5 Thailand 221.00

6 Romania 217.91

7 South Korea 216.67

8 Denmark 216.13

9 Chile 209.83

10 France 201.61

11 Hungary 201.55

12 United States 199.00

First of all, Singapore, Hong Kong and Monaco really can't be compared to the US. Two of them are wealthy city-states and Monaco is very small (and wealthy).

Once you get to #4 Switzerland, the difference is negligible. The difference between a 200mbps connection and 222 is barely noticeable. It's more than enough to stream movies and use the internet at home, and it's way too slow if you are running a large tech heavy operation. But if you are in the latter group, chances are you aren't doing it at home and much faster commercial broadband of 1GB+ is readily available in most major cities. And if you are like most places, you probably do most of your heavy lifting in data centers belonging to Msft/google/amazon, where the internet speeds are significantly faster.

It seems to me that the important metric is not average speed, but % of people with, say, reliable connections of 50mbps or faster. That's probably how much you need for reasonable home usage with with a few TVs streaming. I don't think most people will notice the difference beyond that.

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#32

Post by Bayart »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #8
hokumguru wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the countries above the USA... They all mostly have one thing in common, their populace lives almost entirely within a few primary concentrated areas. It is much easier to build out the infrastructure to only support a handful of major cities which certainly helps raise the average. edit: I want to make it clear that I think the fact that I can get gigabit internet in a town of 300k smack in the center of…

Yup, but I wonder why there were bandwidth issues in Europe when the pandemic first started (video streaming services started throttling bitrate very aggressively in Europe) but there were no issues in the United States. Perhaps the last mile average is slow but the overall infrastructure and backbone is more robust in the US (this would make sense historically as well)

As far as I can remember, the stress was mostly put on exchanges more so than overall capacity. I'm not aware of any real degradation beyond the panic in the news about « running out of Internet ».

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#33

Post by SteveGerencser »

Arubis wrote: post #22

That’s…not terrible? Getting broadband in rural America is rough, and the permissive atmosphere for monopolistic behavior by ISPs is maddening. Pricing for internet access is way worse than in East Asia or western and central Europe. Some folks can’t get real broadband at all, and they’re disproportionally lower down on the socioeconomic spectrum. That’s not fair. These issues are real. But overall, 12th sounds…prett…

We moved to a small rural community where a T1 isn't even available. I can get a 3Mb DSL connection or satellite. I have both because I need to redundancy.

I did call to see what it would cost to have 'real' internet brought out here. They were happy to bring out a fiber line from the nearest town to serve our area. But it was going to cost me around $5k/mo with a 3 year contract for a 10Mb dedicated line. It's cheaper to do point to point relays from that far.

The real issue is that the telcos have been collecting fees for years specifically aimed at rolling out broadband into rural communities and they have done nothing but pocket the money.

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#34

Post by lokedhs »

This number isn't very useful for the purpose a lot of people here use it for, ,to determine the quality of broadband in a given country.

I'm using Singapore as an example, where 1 Gb/s fibre is available to almost every household (the government ensured that two fibre pairs were installed to each household, and the resident can buy any service they want from different ISP's).

The number shown, at less than 100 Mb/s must mix in tests over mobile as well, which begs the question as to how useful it is.

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#35

Post by ggggtez »

harles wrote: post #10

It’s hard to tell if these results hold any meaning or not. Where did the numbers come from? Are these just averages from their users? If so, I’d imagine a huge selection bias pushing these numbers up. Are these households only or do they include data centers? I’m betting the US has a higher density of servers per capita than most countries. Using the median or including standard deviation seems like the only way to…

Important to note, most broadband providers realized they were getting hammered by speed test in the ratings, and so launched their own (fake) speed tests that show them over performing what they actually can do.

So customers suffering from bad internet are more likely to be directed by their ISP to other services rather than speedtest.

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#36

Post by vel0city »

wyager wrote: post #27
Arubis wrote: post #22

That’s…not terrible? Getting broadband in rural America is rough, and the permissive atmosphere for monopolistic behavior by ISPs is maddening. Pricing for internet access is way worse than in East Asia or western and central Europe. Some folks can’t get real broadband at all, and they’re disproportionally lower down on the socioeconomic spectrum. That’s not fair. These issues are real. But overall, 12th sounds…prett…

Wired broadband in rural America has historically never been socially efficient and is mostly a patronage-based subsidy scheme. I say this as a nominal beneficiary of subsidized rural broadband. That said, with the advent of starlink, reasonably high-speed internet in rural areas is now socially efficient, or getting there rapidly. I’m currently using starlink at my rural house and it’s great. It’s obviously still su…

I do see good things in the future for internet in rural areas. Between Starlink (maybe even other competitive satellite in the future?), 5G, and WISPs getting better and better, effective internet access in traditionally underserved areas should really start becoming both available and affordable.

With smaller towns/rural areas having a much lower cost of living and the expanding ability to work from anywhere with a decent internet connection, I hope we begin to see a resurgence of small town America. Not everyone wants to live in giant megacities.

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#37

Post by wyager »

trothamel wrote: post #5
hokumguru wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the countries above the USA... They all mostly have one thing in common, their populace lives almost entirely within a few primary concentrated areas. It is much easier to build out the infrastructure to only support a handful of major cities which certainly helps raise the average. edit: I want to make it clear that I think the fact that I can get gigabit internet in a town of 300k smack in the center of…

The top 3 - Singapore, Hong Kong (SAR), and Monaco - are smaller than Rhode Island, the smallest state - even when you add them together.

My gigabit internet in HK was similarly priced to my gigabit internet in suburban USA (like US$80/mo). That said, in HK areas with robust competition between ISPs, some of the offerings were shockingly cheap. A friend of mine got 10Gbps for less than US$100/mo after negotiating. I don’t remember if HK lines were symmetric or not - my US line certainly isn’t.

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#38

Post by pcurve »

Arubis wrote: post #22

That’s…not terrible? Getting broadband in rural America is rough, and the permissive atmosphere for monopolistic behavior by ISPs is maddening. Pricing for internet access is way worse than in East Asia or western and central Europe. Some folks can’t get real broadband at all, and they’re disproportionally lower down on the socioeconomic spectrum. That’s not fair. These issues are real. But overall, 12th sounds…prett…

It's shockingly good. I'm actually very proud of this statistic. Most won't see material difference between 200mbps vs #1 spot of 250mbps. It's negligible.

However.

I think there's a rather huge sampling bias, because the data is gathered from people who come to Speedtest.com to run the test.

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#39

Post by jeffbee »

badsoftware wrote: post #2

I often see people commenting on the poor quality of America’s internet compared to European countries, but how much of that is due to the physical size of America? I imagine it’s much more difficult to build out a larger network especially when many parts of America are not very populated.

The thing about rural America is nobody lives there. More than 80% of Americans live in urbanized areas, the same fraction as France, Norway, Spain, and the world generally.

The reason America doesn't have broadband or trains is not because of its extent, it's because our war budget is $2000 per capita per year.

Re: United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index

#40

Post by ortusdux »

badsoftware wrote: post #2

I often see people commenting on the poor quality of America’s internet compared to European countries, but how much of that is due to the physical size of America? I imagine it’s much more difficult to build out a larger network especially when many parts of America are not very populated.

I would like to see some metrics that take into consideration landmass, population distribution, grid scale, or the like. Singapore's road network is roughly 3500km vs the United State's 6,850,000km.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_road_netw...

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