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Print Edition StoriesTuesday, August 25, 2009
Report: Four New England states claim spot in top 10 broadband speed list
By Rodney H. Brown
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According to a new report, four of the six New England states ranked in the top 10 for having the fastest average broadband speeds, with Rhode Island ranking second in the entire nation. That’s the good news. The bad news, the report by the group Speed Matters said, is that on average, the U.S. is still far below the fastest country, South Korea.
With an average download speed of 9.788 megabits per second, Rhode Island trailed only Delaware, according to The 2009 Internet Speed Report. Speed Matters is a project of the Communications Workers of America, a trade union affiliated with the AFL-CIO.
Massachusetts came in fourth in the nation at 8.645 mbps, followed by New Hampshire at eighth with 7.165 mbps and Connecticut in ninth place with 7.119 mbps. Maine trailed far behind in 42nd place with 3.61 mbps and Vermont was the slowest of the New England states at 3.318 mbps and 45th in the country.
The United States on average has a download speed of 5.1 mbps, the report found, trailing far behind South Korea which boasts 20.1 mbps average speeds. Also well ahead of the U.S. is Japan at 16 mbps and Sweden at 12.7 mbps.
Speed Matters noted that 18 percent of the 413,000 broadband speed testers that made up the report have connections slower than 768 kilobits per second, which is actually below the current federal definition for what qualifies as broadband.
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