East Coast Broadband Fastest In USA

Death Metal Maniac writes "The study, which was conducted by affordable-broadband advocacy group Speed Matters, found that the nine states with the fastest median download connections are all located on the East Coast. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps) and Delaware (6.7Mbps) have the fastest, and nearly triple the national median download speed of 2.3Mbps. Rounding out the Top 5 states are New Jersey (5.8Mbps), Virginia (5Mbps) and Massachusetts (4.6Mbps)."

geh

That's nice.

Meanwhile, as of last week, we STILL cannot buy FIOS in Philadelphia. No matter how much I want to give Verizon my money, they just won't take it.

Re:geh

Up here in NH (One of the many states nobody cares about, apparently), I got a flyer from my new local provider called Fairpoint.

There was a big controversy over fairpoint buying out NH, Vermont, and Maine, because fairpoint clearly didn't have the resources to roll out fiber optics, and verizon had "plans" to, (apparently not).

Anyway, I got a flyer from them announcing faster-than-ever 7.1 mbps downloads. Of course, in Boston, Comcast offers 16 mbps, but hey, this was still a nice move from my current verizon dsl at 3 mbps.

So I called them up and asked how to get started. They did some checking on things, and told me it wasn't available in my area. I was confused. Did they not have my address when they sent me the flyer? I begged them to take money from me, I just want some speed, please! But alas, We live in the USA. In internet terms, we're third world.

Re:geh

So I called them up and asked how to get started. They did some checking on things, and told me it wasn't available in my area. I was confused. Did they not have my address when they sent me the flyer?

Yeah. Frustrating. I've been having fliers delivered to my doorstep for *years* now, and yet they're not even remotely in my area. It's not just a situation where the neighbors down the street can get FiOS, but I'm just barely on the other side of the line-- no. You can't get FiOS in my zip code. You can't even get it in my neighboring zipcodes.

Re:geh

Cox

Arkansas
$45 for 9mbps
$60 for 12mbps
http://www.cox.com/gocox/HighSpeedInternet/ [cox.com]

Arizona
$45 for 12mbps
$60 for 20
http://www.cox.com/arizona/hsi.asp [cox.com]

Santa Barbara
$50 for 5mbps
$65 for 12mbps
http://www.cox.com/santabarbara/highspeedinternet/packages.asp [cox.com]

Idaho
$42 to $56 for
7 mbps to 12 mbps
http://www.cox.com/idaho/highspeedinternet/pricing.asp [cox.com]

Re:geh

I mean, FIOS is fast and all from what the numbers say, but I don't look forward to being a Verizon customer.

Yes, it's painful to navigate their phone tree to get anything done. I wanted to increase the speed (i.e., pay them more money), and it took nearly two days of tranfers to get to the right person to talk to.

On the other hand, it took less than 3 days to get that higher speed enabled, and I have had so few problems with the service itself (almost no downtime, no speed limits, etc.) that it's worth the occasional hassle.

One other thing I like about Verizon FIOS is that the price they quote is what you pay. I'm on a $139.99/month plan (15/15 with 5 static IPs) and that is exactly what my bill is each month. No tax, no franchise fee, no "network access fee", etc. Of course, the cell phone side of Verizon can't do their bills like this because "it's a goverment-imposed rule" (not).

Re:geh

Boston was supposedly the first metro area they rolled out FiOS, and while almost every suburb has it around here their urban penetration has been exactly ZERO.

While Slashdotters are often more interested in FiOS internet service, it's cable television services which call the shots. To offer cable in a locality, Verizon must first obtain a license from the city or town. As of now, the City of Boston has not granted them a license. Looking at the City's website [cityofboston.gov], I don't see any evidence that Verizon has applied for a license either.

Maybe you should call them to see where the licensing procedure stands?

Re:geh

While Slashdotters are often more interested in FiOS internet service, it's cable television services which call the shots. To offer cable in a locality, Verizon must first obtain a license from the city or town.

This is only for TV service. I had FIOS internet for nearly two years before my county approved Verizon as a cable TV provider.

Re:geh

Comcast has been horrific for me. Their customer service is terrible, their software for their DVRs is awful (even their own techs say it), and they engage in all sorts of shady underhanded stuff like forging reset packets, throttling high usage customers (who are within the bandwidth limits they ALREADY paid for).

Overall they've just been a terrible company to have to deal with.

Re:geh

Bad Analogy Guy, is that you?

Only 6.8Mbps?

I live on the East Coast (of Japan) and have a 100Mbps-rated optical fibre connection. Though the fastest I've got out of it is a piddling 87Mbps.

Muahaha.

Re:Only 6.8Mbps?

I live on the East Coast (of Japan) and have a 100Mbps-rated optical fibre connection. Though the fastest I've got out of it is a piddling 87Mbps.

Muahaha.

We are talking median speed. If you and your 5 neighbors have speeds of 1,1,2,3 and 87 your median speed is 2Mbps.

flawed test

This test is the same like those websites where you can test your download speed. They are all flawed in that they don't take your subscription into account. If you have somebody who subscribed for a cheapass 512/512 ADSL, he pulls the average down. Those tests should be limited to those who pay for "all you can get". Otherwise it tells more about a states economical position then about their internet access.

Re:flawed test

They are all flawed in that they don't take your subscription into account.

It depends who's using the list. If I'm designing web pages, I want to know what people in my target demographic HAVE, not what they can get. If it's a penis size competition, then I question the study's usefulness. Besides, we have the Olympics for that - and China has the biggest gold dick. Though the US has true melting pot of total dicks.

Interestingly, all of these states are densely populated. From Wikipedia:
Rhode Island ranked 2
Delaware ranked 6
New Jersey ranked 1
Virginia ranked 14
Massachusetts ranked 3

The only think close to an outlier there is Virginia, which is still densely populated over near Washington - which would actually be number 1 if it were a state.

I guess if I lived in number 4 Connecticut or number 5 Maryland, I'd want to know what was up!

Duh

East Coast. Rhode Island (6.8Mbps) and Delaware (6.7Mbps) have the fastest, and nearly triple the national median download speed of 2.3Mbps. Rounding out the Top 5 states are New Jersey (5.8Mbps), Virginia (5Mbps) and Massachusetts (4.6Mbps).

The states with the slowest median download speeds primarily are located in the Midwestern or Western regions of the United States, including Idaho (1.3Mbps), Wyoming (1.3Mbps), Montana (1.3Mbps) and North Dakota (1.2Mbps); Alaska had the slowest download speed (0.8Mbps). I

Is anyone surprised that small, densely populated states have higher download speeds than large, sparsely populated ones? It's the same argument that comes up every time worldwide broadband speeds are discussed: small and dense = easier to wire.

-Grey [silverclipboard.com]

check this out:

In Romania UPC gives 20mbps for ~30$/mo ... and it is considered a developing country.

so far behind

Two years ago, when I lived in Paris, I got 20Mbit. Now I live in New York and get more like 4Mbit.

Yep, the world's richest country is years behind in technology infrastructure..

Re:so far behind

It's the population density, idiot! It's easier for France to have better broadband because the people are all close together! Japan is even faster because everyone in Japan lives in Tokyo which has a really big population density! You can't compare Paris to somewhere sparsely populated like New York!

No, wait...

We have 50 Mbps fiber in Utah

The study obviously wasn't that thorough. We have Fiber in utah that gives you 50 Mbps UP and down for $80/mo. It's a helluva lot cheaper and better than Verizon fios.

Duh.

Al Gore was born in Washington D.C. so obviously the internet is fastest on the east coast. The packets don't have to travel as far to reach him.

Obviously...

RI can be covered by a handful of WiFi APs , so that's no surprise.... ;-)

hmmm

I get about 756k in Miami for $10 a month. I could go faster I guess, but why bother? When I went from 2400 baud to 44k baud, that was really cool. When I went from 44k baud to cable modem, that was really cool. Any incremental increase after that is eh.

"High speed"

I live 5 minutes away from MAE-East so you'd think internet access would cost less here, but I'm paying $60 per month for 15/2. I'd be willing to bet that the recent surge in advertised speeds has more to do with marketing than capacity.

At some point a few years ago ISPs realized that most web services don't have the bandwidth on their end to serve lots of users with 15 megabit connections, so they'd never actually have to provide all that bandwidth. They decided they were going to use speed purely as a marketing gimmick and started selling "15 megabit" connections with no capacity to back them up. That's why they hate BitTorrent so much -- it forces them to deliver the product they advertise (what an insane concept!). They oversell bandwidth by a factor of 100 and then turn around and label people who actually use the capacity they pay for as "bandwidth hogs". It's pitiful.

You mean gangsta rap lies?!?

I don't understand this at all. Tupac said "Let's show these fools how we do it on the west side, cause you and I know it's the best side." All this talk about west coast is the best coast, now you're trying to tell me east side is better? That doesn't even rhyme! How do you expect me to believe you?

Re:Rest of the world

In french urban areas, the standard ADSL is 24Mb/s ATM (8 to 18Mb/s real TCP BW) for 29 to 39E/Mo (with unlimited phone and taxes included), but in a few major cities, 100Mb/s cable is being deployed and sold for the same price.

What competition

What is that competition you are talking about? For last three years, I do not have any choice other than comcast for "high speed internet". And this is central NJ - probably the largest urban sprawl in the whole freaking world.