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The Median U.S. Broadband Speed? Finland's Divided by 10.

August 13, 2008 at 4:59 am PT

An estimated 15 percent of Americans still use dial-up to connect to the Internet. And they might as well. Because according to a new study by the Communication Workers of America, the typical real-time Internet connection speed in the United States isn’t that much faster. CWA’s Speed Matters survey found the median download speed in the U.S. to be a mortifying 2.35 megabits per second.

Pathetic. In Japan the median download speed is 63.60Mbps. In South Korea it’s 49 mbps. For crying out loud, in Finland it’s 21.7Mbps.

How is it that the median download speed of the country that invented the Internet is this abysmal? No wonder it’s fallen to 15th place among industrialized nations in the percent of the population subscribing to broadband. No wonder broadband adoption slipped to a seven-year low in the second quarter of 2008.

Tagged with: broadband, Communications Workers of America, connection speed, CWA, dial-up, Finland, industrialized nations, Internet, Japan, John Paczkowski, megabit, real-time, South Korea, Speed Matters, U.S. download speed, United States

comments so far. Add yours.

http://allthingsd.com/ Eric Welch

Last year I found a place slower than the US. No, Jaipur and Surat (not to mention Mumbai) India was way faster than anything I have seen here in Southern California.

That place I found slower? The Karafuu hotel on the east coast of the island of Zanzibar.
http://tlidforss.blogspot.com Thomas Lidforss

I think there is a parallel to this and the general lack of interest in the importance of having new infrastructure in USA. I consider the Telecom Act of 1996 the beginning of the end of USA importance from a communications point of view. I wish somebody in Washington DC will wake up before it is too late.
David Owens

Depressing as stories like this are, we need more info. For example, how many carriers are there? One, or many, like here, and indifferent to the needs of their customers? What is the actual size of the net in Finland? The entire country or just a few cities? Same for Korea.
I would like to switch to Verizon Fios but they aren’t in my neighborhood yet, and nobody knows when they will be. If ever.
Stan Lepeak

Not to defend by any means US ISP’s, but recall, however, you can fit the entire country of Finland in Montana with room to spare and its entire population does not meet the level of NYC. And its total taxation levels for many exceed 50%. So hardly an “apples to apples” comparison.