United States Broadband speed ranks 12th according to SpeedTest Global Index • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by pteraspidomorph » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

By default speedtest only reliably measures last mile speed, since it defaults to the nearest server it can find. That data has its uses, but it doesn't tell the whole story, and is often misleading. Backbone, stability and practical latency tend to be much bigger issues, which are not represented here at all (last mile latency is represented but not even accounted for in the ranking, nor is upload bandwidth).

You could make a much better index using speedtest by taking several measurements for each ISP using near and far nodes, and using weighted averages accounting for upload, download and latency.

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

#42

Post by chrismarlow9 » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

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…

I used to live in rural and the best to offer was a wimax connection. The problem was there wasn't enough people locally to justify building a second tower to handle more people, but there were enough people to slow down the single tower they all shared.

Ultimately it would have still made money for the company, just not enough, gotta get those earnings up!

I also tried satellite providers but they price gouged via bandwidth caps. After about 50gb used for the month you could upgrade to their ultra high bandwidth package, or accept dialup speeds for the rest of the month.

I still have plenty of friends who live in these places, and it really has an impact on life. People still use phone books and have regular cable tv. Only recently have some started to cut the cord.

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

#43

Post by Arubis » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

SteveGerencser wrote: post #33

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 cheap…

Yeah, this is definitely a common experience & a real problem. Rural broadband _access_ can be spotty towards terrible. But it's probably not captured here--in fact, that might skew 'average speed' stats _higher_, since there's fewer folks willing or able to fork over money for those slower lines.

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

#44

Post by tnorthcutt » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

SteveGerencser wrote: post #33

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 cheap…

It's cheaper to do point to point relays from that far.

I would encourage you to look into this more, if you haven't already. I set up such a connection for my in-laws who live in rural Oklahoma, and it's been a resounding success. It still has issues, but it's worlds better than the antiquated satellite options they had before.

They'll likely transition to using Starlink when it's available as the point to point connection (3 hops for them) is difficult to troubleshoot since I'm a thousand miles away, but if Starlink isn't an option for you for some reason, a point to point connection can be a great choice.

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

#45

Post by Arubis » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

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…

On reflection, I'm curious how much of this is directly caused by US demographics shifting towards greater urbanization.

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

#46

Post by yoz-y » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

lbriner wrote: post #16

What is wrong with being 12th? The numbers all look pretty massive anyway and my 70Mb/s is fast enough for me to work from home and stream video.

It seems that for a subset of people not being considered best is an insult.

One thing though that is often brought up is that the US situation would be improved by having more competition. Unfortunately it seems that the regulators are turning a blind eye on this problem.

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

#47

Post by hocuspocus » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

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)

There was no issue in Europe either, it was a political decision, not a technical one.

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

#48

Post by Xorlev » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

SteveGerencser wrote: post #33

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 cheap…

Starlink might be a decent option for you. You said you have satellite, but that has me thinking HughesNet.

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

#49

Post by dekhn » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

chadash wrote: post #31

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, th…

wait, the US is $12 with 199mbs, trailing Singaport at 262?

This is a useless comparison and in fact shows that the US has deployed near globally maximum speeds to a huge populace.

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

#50

Post by mbesto » Fri, Sep 17, 2021, 3:46 PM UTC

hokumguru wrote: post #3

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.

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…

Now take those same countries and look at GDP, number of publicly traded software companies, and capital investment provided by governments. There is some valid critique about how poor the USA is in terms of bandwidth. Not to mention cultural appropriation by most Americans of "being the best" at everything. Thus there's a reason (maybe not 100% valid) why people complain the USA isn't #1 on this list.