For Fast Internet in the US, Virginia Tops the Charts 98
According to data gathered by Akamai, an analysis from Broadview Networks comes to the conclusion that the top five U.S. states for broadband speed are Virginia (at the top of the list, with an average transfer speed of 13.78 Mbps), Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Washington, with Washington, D.C. slightly edging out the similarly-named state; Alaska comes in dead last. These are average speeds, though, and big states have more variation to account for, including connections in the hinterlands. You could still have a fast connection in Chattanooga, or be stuck on dial-up in the Texas panhandle.
Oh, *that* Virginia! (Score:2)
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West "BY GOD!" Virginia!
One Big Family!
Second fastest (Score:2)
from New York. Where's the slowpokes from Virginia?
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Busy laughing at all the suckers living in New York.
Don't. I live outside the US and get 55.3Mb/s down for a reasonable price. I don't live in a major city and I don't have fiber, only DSL. I could also get pretty much the same speed for pretty much the same money from my cable TV company.
The US is behind on broadband.
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Also - no usage cap or fair usage police nonsense. I could max out the line constantly if I wanted to.
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I'm in Virginia Beach. I pay for 50/10 ($60), but Cox will bump it up if the node isn't too busy. Just did a test and got 64/12..
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Fiber to the Home (Score:4, Interesting)
Hell we have faster than that in in Clarksville, Tennessee :) with reasonably decent prices. Oh ya we have Municipal Fiber to the Home
50mbps - $44.95
100mbps - $69.96
200mpbs - $89.95
1000mbps - $249.95
You can get triple pack with 175 TV channels, phone, and 50mbps internet for $118 a month.
And these are not special offer prices. They just bumped everyone's speeds up by 2x and they have yet to raise prices. Speeds are bidirectional so you get the same up as down. They are a Netflix open connect partner, and you actually get the speeds they promise! Go CDE Lightband!
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Well, here in Sweden:
- my parents in law get 1000/1000 Mbps (real speed 950 Mbps up/down) for ~$60 / month
- my parents get 100/100 Mbps for ~$15
- my own house gets 100/100 Mbps for $50 / month
- my friends in a rural area / village of 20 people get 100/100 for $30 / month
All of them FTTH delivered via (un)restricted 1 Gbit/s ethernet.
Installation cost is typically $400-$2000.
Peter
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Compared to what you can get in Europe or Asia, those "decent prices" are in fact insanely expensive.
You seen to think "Europe" = London or Paris.
ISP rates are directly related to population density.
Clarksville has a population density of 1,502 people/sq mile
Scottlands got about the same population density... lets see what their rates are like:
http://www.scotnet.co.uk/servi... [scotnet.co.uk]
Service Name Fibre Ultra Fibre Ultra Plus Fibre Extreme Fibre Extreme Plus
Upstream Speed* 10Mb/s 10Mb/s 20Mb/s 20Mb/s
Downstream Speed* 40Mb/s 40Mb/s 80Mb/s 80Mb/s
Connection charge (
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ISP rates are directly related to population density.
Citation please. I know plenty of people in both urban and rural areas, and they pay about the same. Far more important is the amount of local competition, and American ISPs have carved up both urban and rural areas to prevent that as much as possible.
Re:Fiber to the Home (Score:4, Informative)
ISP rates are directly related to population density.
Citation please. I know plenty of people in both urban and rural areas, and they pay about the same. Far more important is the amount of local competition, and American ISPs have carved up both urban and rural areas to prevent that as much as possible.
I've worked for multiple ISPs for over 15yrs in nearly every department you can imagine. I'm my own citation.
You're right, people do pay the same in Urban and Rural areas. But that's because of federal law, not because it costs the same.
Remember how people complain about the "monopoly" the phone company has? That's not really a monopoly... there's an agreement between the Local government, the FCC and the telecommunications company in the area. They are very long and complex agreements but basically they boil down to:
The FCC will set some/most rates and fees for the telecom. Changes to these rates must be approved by the FCC.
The Telecom will charge everyone the same rate, and will not discriminate based on location. (location discrimination is specifically why the FCC regulates telecomes. The government wanted rural phone service and this was the only way to make it affordable)
The telecom will provide service to everyone with rare exceptions (your house is on an island for example)
In return for this the Local government will give the Telecom exclusive right to serve that area.
Now, the telecom does have some leeway in the rates they charge. But it's not a lot. The FCC will definitely get involved and definitely charge them fines if they do something wrong. I've seen billing mistakes lead to fines before. But what really keeps rates down are cellphones. People are moving to cellular in droves. It's to the point that POTs service and internet access are not profitable at all. Trust me, I've seen the numbers... landline stuff barely breaks even. But, where the telecoms make most of their money is in services to business. Managed networks, managed software, IP phones, collocation services, etc... if the telecom is the incumbent in the area, they are likely the first company a business will call about that sort of thing and those services are almost pure profit.
The best way to think about the whole thing is to realize how the equipment works. DSL works to about 30,000 feet. Meaning, you have a DSL card at one end, the furthest away you can go before the noise makes the DSL not work anymore is 30,000 feet. You may have heard of some new tech that lets it go farther. But I've seen real world tests of that stuff and it's all failed. So the phone company puts in a building in your town... everyone within 30k feet of that building is golden. After 30k feet the phone company has to install what we call a "DSA" this is basically a mini-switch that they run trunks to. Once again, everyone within 30k feet of that DSA is good. The problem is, each of those remotes pretty much costs the same. They're a few million dollars. They now have mini-DSA's that are basically just plastic boxes that cost a few hundred thousand, but they are still expensive.
So, you can probobly see where this is heading... you make as much money off that DSA as there are people within 30,000 feet of it. The more people, the more money you make. But I've seen DSA's that literally serve 20 people before. Think about that, a minimum $500,000 install to serve 20 people. So, the FCC mandates the phone company charges everyone the same. So the rates for people in town go up, to lower the rates for the people in rural areas. Like it or not, that's the way it works in this country. And before you rant on about rich people living on their ranches, these people are by and large poor and rural. Think of the Appalachian mountains. That's one of the most expensive areas to serve that I've seen. But without the subsidized service those people would not even have phone service. It would have a huge impact on their economy.
I wish there was more info out there for you to read about this. Unfortunately its something you pick up in the industry. You could start by looking at the FCC website. I tried to find more info for you but it's really lacking out there.
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The first three of those generally give their cheapest prices via bundled deals (e.g. phone/broadband or phone/TV/broadband), so it's hard to gi
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Compared to what you can get in Europe or Asia, those "decent prices" are in fact insanely expensive.
You seen to think "Europe" = London or Paris.
ISP rates are directly related to population density.
BULLSHIT, not in Europe. You can get 1Gbps in rural Romania/Poland for ~$30. The key is NEW (actually build right now, not some 30 years ago) fiber infrastructure and new ISPs connecting everyone.
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Compared to what you can get in Europe or Asia, those "decent prices" are in fact insanely expensive.
Perhaps. Depends on the location and provider. Here in Bern, Switzerland, the cable company offers 250/15 internet for CHF 89/month ($98 USD). That's only $10 more than the 200/200 for $89.95 offering. Not unreasonable. For CHF 105/month they package a bunch of cable TV channels (including European and American sports) and 250/15 internet.
Swisscom, the incumbent phone company, has fiber-to-the-home. 300/60 internet with even more TV channels costs CHF 154/month. They offer up to 1000/100 connection if you'r
Municipal fiber? You poor victims. (Score:5, Funny)
Fortunately, we here in your neighboring Free State of North Carolina elected a legislature that was willing to protect us from the predatory pricing of municipal broadband.
Well, we elected them, but the big telephone and cable companies did provide a little financial incentive to help keep them honest, as it were.
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And yet here I am (Score:4, Interesting)
Here I am, in downtown Richmond (capital of Virginia). I *should* be getting some blazing-fast internet, right? Perfect conditions for it.
Nope. 3Mbps DSL. I can't switch ISPs because my apartment gave a monopoly to Telcom Communications (seriously, that's their actual name - they seem to be reselling CenturyLink). Sure, they don't call it that, but I checked every ISP and none of them will provide service to me except some DSL that's just as slow as what I've got.
And yet my parents, living twenty minutes away from anywhere in the empty part of Chesterfield, are getting 50Mbps FttH. I really want to see the economic explanation for that - it's too expensive to run fiber literally a block from Main Street, but a 20-mile run past several farms and lumber fields is somehow profitable.
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No 4g available? I'm using a Verizon 4g access point from a horse farm in the middle of nowhere and Speakeasy's speed test gives me 10.46Mbps down/7.53Mbps up.
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I live in swamps of south Georgia, but my ISP upgraded from dsl2plus to VDSL so I went from 12mbit down/768k up to 20 Mbit down/2 Mbit up.
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Re:And yet here I am (Score:5, Informative)
Here I am, in downtown Richmond... ...3Mbps DSL.
You do know that they are talking about the average speed for the state..?
The way it breaks down in Virginia is:
You (and everybody else) = 3 Mbps
The CIA in Langley = 2000 Tbps
State average = 13.7 Mbps
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I get 120 down on the outskirts of Charlottesville.
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I sure don't.
Who are you with?
Your momma.
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Here I am, in downtown Richmond... ...3Mbps DSL.
You do know that they are talking about the average speed for the state..?
The way it breaks down in Virginia is:
You (and everybody else) = 3 Mbps The CIA in Langley = 2000 Tbps
State average = 13.7 Mbps
Though your post was likely meant to be humorous, there is some truth to it. The infrastructure here in NoVa is definitely influenced by the heavy presence of intelligence work.
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Kinda like the Ashe statue on Monument. The neo-Confederates didn't want to put it up because he was black. The professional complaint class wanted it there because he was. Nobody ever just came out and said to throw it away because it's a fugly piece of shit.
Not all in WA (Score:1)
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They shouldn't need to dig up the streets for DSL. Likely they have too many bridge taps in the circuit or something and don't want to install more lines but existing right of ways should cover expanding and delivery of copper lines for phone service so outside of a few permits, there shouldn't be much capable of stopping them from maintaining existing infrastructure.
It won't be long before they end up forcing an upgrade though. The FCC national broadband strategy is linked with the M2M technology strategy
Wrong way to classify (Score:1)
The survey should have been done by zip code or something approximating actual the size of ISP service areas / local government granted monopolies.
My VA internet SUCKS (Score:1)
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Yeah, median would probably be a better 'average' but I think a heat map in general would be better.
And interestingly enough the map looks very similar to a median household income map.
It doesn't show maximum available internet speeds per area or something more interesting like price per megabit in an area.
To me it just shows that poor and/or rural people tend to have slower internet speeds. Big surprise.
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wtf (Score:1)
Wow i knew our USA internet was terrible but 13 mbps? Are you shitting me? We have 108 mbps in houston and even that sucks balls.
Switzerland (Score:2)
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And yet the report cited shows that only 45% have access to speeds above 10Mbps and 23% of access to speeds above 15Mbps.
Five US states have more people above 10Mbps than Switzerland.
And one of those states by itself, New Jersey, has almost a million more people.
I see a pattern... (Score:1)
Averaging entire states is useless info (Score:1)
These numbers are pretty meaningless. California is far too large to average numbers across the whole state, same with other large states.
You can get 120 mb/s in Los Altos for cheap, but good luck getting anything in the hills near Shasta or Tahoe.
Cox web and TV service (Score:1)
You're Welcome (Score:1)
I helped design & build this network as a subcontractor for Comcast, you're welcome NOVA.
ftth needs fith (Score:1)