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[Recode] U.S. internet speeds rose nearly 40 percent this year

7K views 74 replies 51 participants last post by  Shaded War 
#1 · (Edited)
https://www.recode.net/2018/12/12/18134899/internet-broafband-faster-ookla

Finally some good news: The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet. Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report.
Since my last post got deleted for an unfavored source, although it was first. I think this is great news.
 
#2 ·
I live in what's considered a rural area and just had Charter Spectrum out to fix an outage that started late last night. I've been paying $66/mo for 100/10 and I asked the tech about gigabit, which he told me is now available in my area. He also told me the cost to upgrade was $240 installation fee for what amounts to swapping out the modem, above and beyond the higher monthly fees. That's using the existing copper lines, btw.

He also mentioned that FIOS will be running fiber through my area which will allow for 5-10 gigabit in the near future.

While I don't need faster speeds at this point in time, it's nice to know they are available.
 
#62 ·
I live in a rural area to, and am stuck with the local ISP. It's fiber, but for 30mpbs I pay $200 a month. In my last house, we had Spectrum, and paid $65 a month for 100mbps. It wasn't fiber, but I'd gladly take it back over what I'm paying now...
 
#4 ·
Then I'm going to ask the same: what's the correlation?
 
#5 ·
This news is... obvious....why would internet speeds get slower and slower?

What I'm interested in is the ratio of the rate of file size growing compared to internet speeds. For an example, anime was around 170mb for a 21 min video 10 years ago. Now it's at least 1gb. Did our internet speeds catch up so that we finish downloading an episode of an anime at the same size we did 10 years ago?
 
#6 ·
Must be nice. I live in Fort Worth, a city of a million people, and I can only get 50/5 EVER. They said they can never upgrade our speed and that I cannot get any other service. it's ATT Uverse ADSL OR DirectTV satellite (Owned by ATT.)
 
#43 · (Edited)
Yeah, not all areas are getting bumps up in speed or options. My parents actually can no longer get DSL (even though it use to be an option). They now stuck to shelling out for expensive satellite with caps or 4G LTE which is still not cheap and the signal is crappy for internet where they are at.

While I'm down here in the pandhandle of Florida (internet still out from the hurricane atm). But, when my connect was up, got pretty good speeds (had higher speeds than what the plan stated). Offset though, I actually have the rare choice of three to four ISPs. Nutty enough one ISP selling 100Mbps down for like 40 bucks but usually can get them to do special deal down to 20 bucks (compentition is wonderful when an area has it). For me, 100Mbps down is enough as I'm right by the node boxes (ain't kidding, one is right smack by the wall of my townhouse and the other is in the front yard). When the connection was up before the hurricane, I easily pulled down 500-600GBs a month.
 
#7 ·
Now if they could just bump those upload rates...

I have a Gig down and 35Mb up, lol, come on...
 
#9 ·
#10 · (Edited)
I haven't really felt the need for faster internet. I mean more is always better but for the price, why bother?

I have 25 down/10 up ADSL line, every page loads fast/instantly, never have any issues streaming anything from any of the typical websites, everything auto plays and goes without effort even at max res like 4k.

There's downloads but half the time you're limited by the server and even if you did have some crazy gigabit internet you still wouldn't be able to utilize it's full potential so it would be mostly a waste. 25/10 is also around the max most VPN's support so if I had anything faster I would have to run naked if I wanted to take advantage of it.

My usenet downloads are automated anyway so all the "Linux Distros" are downloading when I'm away or sleeping so everything is already there on the computer when I get back, never been an issue. I run an FTP server and a mail server on my residential line, there's never any issues; people can complete a 10gb download off me in 20 minutes or so. EDIT: The math on that last one makes no sense but I checked my server logs and yea client/server completed the download in 19 minutes, so maybe my ISP is messed up and somehow gave me more upload.

So yea why do I need better internet exactly? I mean if it's free yea sure why not but I don't seem to have any incentive right now. Thing to note is that this is an internet connection for me and me only, if I had 3 kids streaming stuff off tablets, Playstations, 4 phones on the wifi and other stuff it might be different.
 
#12 ·
I haven't really felt the need for faster internet. I mean more is always better but for the price, why bother?

I have 25 down/10 up ADSL line, every page loads fast/instantly, never have any issues streaming anything from any of the typical websites, everything auto plays and goes without effort even at max res like 4k.

There's downloads but half the time you're limited by the server and even if you did have some crazy gigabit internet you still wouldn't be able to utilize it's full potential so it would be mostly a waste. 25/10 is also around the max most VPN's support so if I had anything faster I would have to run naked if I wanted to take advantage of it.

My usenet downloads are automated anyway so all the "Linux Distros" are downloading when I'm away or sleeping so everything is already there on the computer when I get back, never been an issue. I run an FTP server and a mail server on my residential line, there's never any issues; people can complete a 10gb download off me in 20 minutes or so.

So yea why do I need better internet exactly? I mean if it's free yea sure why not but I don't seem to have any incentive right now. Thing to note is that this is an internet connection for me and me only, if I had 3 kids streaming stuff off tablets, Playstations, 4 phones on the wifi and other stuff it might be different.
I beg to differ, i moved to France from the US where i had coax 100/10 and it was very unreliable, i now have 1000/350 for a third or so of what i paid in the US and this includes a mobile 4g plan with 30gb of data. Steam is usually the slowest but i can get 110MB/s on uplay and origin without issues, games download pretty much in under an hr where before it would take me 8+. Sure for regular people it's not worth upgrading if they charge an arm and a leg, here it's the same price, free installation and 50€ activation fee.
 
#16 ·
*looks at 250GB data cap*


whooppiee!?
 
#18 · (Edited)
Just pulled 42mbps while using a small usb wifi adapter, through an extender which is about 100ft away from the actual ISP provided (and junk) router while visiting at my families house for a bday party. There are currently at least 10 wifi devices being actively used for streaming/games/browsing not counting the wired in desktops.

I'm also on a 15w tdp AMD apu from 2014 and running throuh PIA's vpn service.

I'm not sure why you think the limit of VPN's is so slow speed wise unless you are always connecting wayyyy overseas? I'll have to test this is on my desktop at home and see what my vpn results are.

As far as download use goes, it was nice to be able to download any game from my steam library in a matter of minutes while visiting to play with my nephew. There are plenty of uses for quicker than 25mbps...

Actually scratch the overseas part, just connected to Japan and aside from the atrocious 100ms ping, speed tests returned 53mbps... on the same setup as above.
 
#19 ·
Must be nice to live in a country that actually knows how to upgrade internet.
 
#23 ·
I say this all the time in internet comparison threads where people get all envious and stuff. There's no free lunches.

A connection like those that are the norm in Europe or other countries where people are stacked on top of one another like sardines is available here in North America, it just costs more because unlike those said countries were not stacked on top of one another like sardines. A price of a house here might get you a flat in some of those countries, we just have to spend the difference on a really expensive internet connection if we want the best of both worlds much like they will pay out the rear if they want something bigger than a flat. I'd say here in North America we probably end up at a net gain even after considering the really expensive internet connection.
 
#20 ·
they should focus on improving latency and reliability, or better yet stop overloading the lines with too many users.

they already got the bandwidth down but the horrible latency and inconsistency of it makes it a tad too unusable in certain situations.
 
#22 · (Edited)
I have 1000/1000 from windstream. But it cost me a lot to have them drop a fiber line at my house. Before that i was limited to 50/5. And there is only 1 competitor in town which offers 1000/50 but has data caps. So the install fee was worth it for the unlimited gig. But most people would think twice before paying $1000 for an install fee or more. Even $250 is a lot for most people.
 
#24 · (Edited)
I know my rural Comcast connection is nothing special but dayum, I was d/ling all the seasons of some anime last night (like 36 GB) and was shocked at how fast it was going! I got around 20 MB's per second and had the whole thing in less than half an hour! I rarely pay attention to my d/l speeds as I usually just queue crap to d/l and then leave the computer to it for later, but I was actually waiting to watch it so I hung around for a bit. I dunno, I feel like my mind is still stuck in the mindset of the 2000's where a song would take 10 min to d/l, so the reality that my $70/mo connection now gets me literally over a hundred HOURS of HD video in 30 min is crazy to me!

Eh, nvm, I'm just rambling at this point...

(EDIT - Just realized the episodes are only 480p so not HD, but still look OK)
 
#25 ·
I know the feeling. This thread made me think back a bit of when I was on dial-up using American Online trials that came in the mail or downloading a file and watching it at peak at 6 kbps lol.

I've always paid about $50-60 a month for internet, it's crazy how I was on 56K and have gone to 500 Mbps for roughly the same amount over the years. Google Fiber is just out of my reach locally and is $70 a month for 1 Gbps.
 
#26 ·
I'm just happy that we're going somewhere. Personally, I'd be fine with 50Mb down, but I would love a higher upload speed. For some reason, copper broadband providers rather not give you symmetrical speeds, but fiber providers do.

As for the speeds still slower compared to other countries, with some countries only the size of 1 state in the US, of course it'll be easier and cheaper to build out to them, as compared to the select metro cities in the US vs the rural areas around the country.


Now as for the previous post, reason I posted them was because it was the first source I read. Agree with it or not, it was a news post that linked to the actual report which I provided in case some people didn't want to visit the "unfavorable" site. Just trying to be fair.
 
#69 ·
It's not that copper providers would rather not give symmetrical speeds, there are physical limitations which prevent it. DOCSIS 3.1 has provisions to alleviate this limitation, but there are still large technical barriers to get the performance out of it.

For example, my ISP offers 60/5, 100/10, 200/20, 500/40, and 1000/60. Reason is channel bonding AND limited bandwidth within a coax cable, modulation techniques, and downstream vs upstream carriers. D3.0 used channel bonding which I'm sure you're all familiar with the modems listing 4x4 or 16x4 or 32x4 which are the channel bonds.

My ISP uses 16 bonded channels for DOCSIS 3 with 3 upstream carriers. DOCSIS 3.1 uses OFDM modulation to combine 16 channels into one block. They must still support the other 16 D3 bonded channels tho for the older modems on the network. It's a slow upgrade process getting customers to WANT to let you come in and replace equipment.

Our system will be launching a 4th upstream carrier, but the limitations are that it will be much more susceptible to noise, (loose, old, corroded, ect connections.) which can have a massive negative impact on everyone on that particular node.
Most Coax ISP networks in the US are HFC networks. Hybrid Fiber Coax networks.

Mind you, all these "channels" are 6MHz wide analog QAM 256 carriers, the upstream carriers are QAM64, due to the susceptibility of transient noise.

Just throwing this in as a technical response to try and explain it's ust not as easy as "wanting" to not offer symmetrical DL/UL speeds. It's a compromise with trying to use the available bandwidth most effectively. Remember they have to also have video streams on the additional 6MHz transport streams. Which are usually the ones from 400MHz up towards the 1GHz spectrum.

The asymmetric D/U is likely caused by ISPs not wanting to pay more for upload capacity, as in they gotta pay to who ever they are connected to for the speed or even amount they want to send out where as data flowing to them is probably "unlimited". Similar to: you don't pay the post/courier for receiving packages but you gotta pay them if you want to send any.

That's why we are seeing so much of the 100/10 nonsense connections. Sure it works for the average joe who only browses web but if you're a content creator it's a nightmare. Internally the ISP networks don't really care and are likely symmetric as is most consumer networking equipment. It's only higher up where the networks differ and you start to pay for "slots" to send data. The ISPs gotta be connected somewhere right and those are yet another networking companies who operate large networks for profit, connecting countries, having country wide networks, etc. Where as ISP only often does the last mile and aggregating these end users to a small number of lines.

30/30, last time I checked my ISP was offering something around 50/10 at same price... now I can't even search my address to see the offerings as the search results are empty for my location... other locations in town offering optic... 40/10, 100/100 for negligible more... and 250/150 for a little more. Problem is... the whole house is connected via 200/200 antenna so... yeah good luck getting 100/100 from them I bet as they would have to upgrade the antenna and there certainly wasn't any construction in recent years laying down optic cables around. Even elsewhere I'm curious how they offer optic connection in a house, maybe they finally bought optic from some telco to connect the town or they are simply trying to offer higher speed to fill in their wireless town-town capacity. As to upgrading the 200/200 house antenna, yeah well I'm not sure how many if even any people in here really care to use internet much for them to be worth it to upgrade this over $6k antenna to a higher speed probably more expensive model.

Must be nice to live in areas where optic connections were done, the town/city cares about it's residents and tries to improve offered services in reliability and speed. Thing is most places don't have optic connections and someone would have to connect the towns, then rip up the whole town's tarmac and lay cables into ground in each street to each house... oh yeah, not cheap as you can imagine.

Maybe I will go ask my ISP in person one day, see what is going on in this town with internet speed from them and if it's gonna stay as nowdays kind of behind and slow with wonky reliability. The only plus is it doesn't cost a fortune.

DSL and what not... dead, no one should be using these telco services anymore but sometimes you don't have a choice as no one wants to invest in small towns to offer better competitive services. US is far from the only country having problems with building infrastructure for up to date technologies and services. Tons of money gets poured into mobile devices/services because they also love to charge you outrageous fees for it on a monthly basis and is where the rip off telco has moved to. Even then getting good data speeds on mobile largely depends on location as again only most populated and flat terrain areas get good signal.

Another rubbish ISPs love to do is connect you to their network and not to internet really as in you gotta pay extra, and sometimes that extra is quite large monthly fee compared to what your monthly fee is for the connection itself, to get a public static IP accessible from internet.
Upload bandwidth is a joke. Currently running 200/10. Makes uploading videos a chore. Also notice the lack of upload when a game like Skyrim uploads its save data.

If I could get a solid 200/100+ I'd have to set up a nice home server.
I know your in the EU, but in response to your first sentence see the above response.

Sorry about any formatting, the new site platform sucks for people that don't know the BB code formatting as a second language, or off the top of the head.
 
#31 ·
Damn, some of these speeds are ridiculous. I thought mine was fast. I pay $149.00 a month but have no cap. Dreading moving back to the states after I retire. stupid download caps and insane prices for so little.
 

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#34 ·
Yea that's crazy, our price is around 68€ so probably something like 77$ in todays exchange rate, with that you get a max of 1gbps/300mbps, depending on the time of day i can get anywhere between 700-950 down and the 300 is always constant. Also get TV with a few UHD channels, landline with free calls to france, canada/us and so on. On top of that i get a mobile 4g plan with 30gb of data. In the US i was paying 180$ for 100/10 and vastly unreliable and that's without the mobile, that was another 70+ or wtv verizon charged at the time. It's still shocking to me how much the US charges especially for higher speeds and no cap, theres countries in Europe that are even cheaper then that, people in Romania pay around 24$ a month for ISP service, assuming that includes tv and landline as well.
 
#37 ·
I had charter in MA, was absolute trash. Glad to see prices are coming down though, 90$ a month isn't bad for 1/1.
 
#41 ·
Yea same, was shocked to hear they wired up the building for free, out of 17 people only 5-6 have fiber so not much of a load. It's fiber all the way to the router it's pretty nuts. Router we got has 7 wifi antennas as well i don't even need an aftermarket one, signal reaches outside the building no problem it's pretty nuts.
 
#44 ·
Looks like google fiber lit a fire under isp butts. Guess they realized if they didn't do something about internet speeds it's only a matter of time before someone solves the problem. If I were a cable company I'd have to be aware that most customers would drop me like a good habit given half the chance.
 
#45 ·
But then you need to understand that most smaller ISPs dont have anywhere near the budget that Google does, especially considering google started right off with fiber and didn't have to pay to upkeep coax lines. Here we have ADSL and just jumped right to FTTH, no coax waste of money. The company thats doing it, Orange is not charging anyone for their building wired em, in my city at least. All we paid was 50€ activation and a few more things like extra cable box. Other then that it's pretty impressive.
 
#47 ·
Not really hard when most rural DSL ISP's can only serve 1-2Mbps, thats only 0.4-0.8 more Mbps. It's nice to hear but still pathetic. Now if ISP's move more Fiber to the node or premise you'd see huge improvements in speed and quality. Also moving from gigabit to 10/40/100 GbE on core routers and switches with big pipes between hosts, one can only dream! But we do alright in Southeast MN, mostly straight Fiber or Fiber to cable node, and Ubiquiti point to point out in the rural districts with Fiber to the tower.
 
#48 ·
I live in an area where Spectrum (TWC) once dominated. We have a local provider who quickly rolled out gig fiber over the last few years and boy did that get Spectrum's attention right quick. They went from garbage speeds to starting speeds at 200/20. Granted, that isn't close to fiber...but where you cannot get the local provider yet, Spectrum upped their game tenfold.
 
#50 ·
Guess I can't complain considering I'm getting TV + Internet for like $125 a month. 400/25 (though I usually hover around 450mbps). 1,000 d/u is available in my area for an extra $30 a month and but there is a $250 install fee which I haven't justified yet.
 
#51 ·
I would really like the option to pay for more upload speed. I would like to host my own game streaming/general media server, but my upload pings out at just over 1MB/s, even though I get as much as 250mb/s down. I would happily upgrade to a 100/100 service if there was any available in my area, but there isn't. Not even for a business.

I don't live in a rural area or anything. The service simply isn't offered.
 
#52 ·
As I said earlier, my speed isn't anything to write home about, but I can't imagine personally needing anything faster (hell, I don't really need it to be this fast). I also think I have a 1TB cap, though have never been charged for any overages by Comcast. I know my use-case is vastly different from a lot of you guys who genuinely need gigabit connections for whatever, but I think my usage is pretty par for the course in terms of average ISP consumers (honestly, I probably d/l and u/l quite a bit more than the average consumer) and this current performance I am getting is well beyond adequate for me...

 
#57 ·
As I said earlier, my speed isn't anything to write home about, but I can't imagine personally needing anything faster (hell, I don't really need it to be this fast). I also think I have a 1TB cap, though have never been charged for any overages by Comcast. I know my use-case is vastly different from a lot of you guys who genuinely need gigabit connections for whatever, but I think my usage is pretty par for the course in terms of average ISP consumers (honestly, I probably d/l and u/l quite a bit more than the average consumer) and this current performance I am getting is well beyond adequate for me...

You don't realize you need faster speeds until you get it. I upgraded from 30Mbps Comcast to 1gig Fios. I don't know how I did without it now. It really helps when I would load up BF1 wanting to play and then find out I had to download a 10gig update...a minute and a half later its done.
 
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