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The Internet

East Coast Broadband Fastest In USA 363

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)."
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East Coast Broadband Fastest In USA

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  • geh (Score:5, Interesting)

    by snarfies ( 115214 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:20AM (#24736519) Homepage

    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: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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.

      That's because FIOS requires major infrastructure upgrades on the part of Verizon. But they are working on it. It just may be a while till they get to your neighborhood.
    • Re:geh (Score:5, Informative)

      by FredFredrickson ( 1177871 ) * on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:32AM (#24736719) Homepage Journal
      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.
      • I get about 6 mbps down here in New Orleans...Cox cable.
      • Re:geh (Score:5, Interesting)

        by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:48AM (#24736973) Homepage

        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: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Well, I am exiled in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and I have 8 mbps down/768 kbps up cable Internet. And it is readily available around here.
        So, I don't see a problem, besides greed, for US ISPs to deploy faster broadband networks. If the Brazilians did that here in Brazil, baby-Bells should be able to do the same back in the USA...

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by jlarocco ( 851450 )

          So, I don't see a problem, besides greed, for US ISPs to deploy faster broadband networks. If the Brazilians did that here in Brazil, baby-Bells should be able to do the same back in the USA...

          The problem isn't greed. The problem is that most city governments sell exclusive franchises to ISPs, giving the ISP a local monopoly in exchange for providing access to everybody in town. Since no other ISPs can offer internet service in that market, there's no need to spend money upgrading or lowering prices to

    • by Cheeko ( 165493 )

      Its not just Philly.

      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. I've been contacting Verizon repeatedly over the last year so I can dump first RCN and now Comcast (god I want to get rid of Comcast /shudder), but they keep saying, we'll roll out in your area soon. Its been over 2 years.

      I think the basic issue is that in the suburbs its easy to run the fiber based on the income generated. In

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        In the city where they'll need to do underground work, and possibly dig up sidewalks/streets its much more cost prohibitive compared to the customers it will get them.

        You're right! Many palms to be greased. Unions. Pols. "Neighborhood activists". It is ungodly expensive to do anything in Boston (see Big Dig). Probably this is true of any large American city. And they wonder why those with the means move to the suburbs.

      • Re:geh (Score:5, Informative)

        by yuna49 ( 905461 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:54AM (#24737071)

        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 (Score:5, Interesting)

          by nabsltd ( 1313397 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @11:46AM (#24737785)

          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 (Score:4, Informative)

          by SkyDude ( 919251 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @11:49AM (#24737831)
          I believe a major part of the problem with Fios in bigger cities is the fiber itself. Last year, Corning announced [engadget.com] development of a bendable fiber, which will help the installation in multi-family homes. Not having ever had any experience as a fiber installer, I don't know if this is BS or not, but it seems Verizon is now making plans [dslreports.com] to penetrate the bigger cities.
          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by RobBebop ( 947356 )
            I've worked on embedded systems projects that have used fiber internally as a communications buffer. If a short piece is bent, it breaks and needs to be replaced. And fiber costs more than the normal stuff used for passing messages back and forth... so the bend-and-break (or stretch-and-break) factor is real.
      • Comcast is not a bad ISP. My friend has had it for some time (Seekonk, MA) and while it's not as fast as my Cox cable connection, Comcast has always been extremely resistant to blocking any network ports for their subscribers.

        Even when Code Red was the big thing (and when most ISP's started blocking incoming ports for their subscribers) Comcast wrote a script to check for the vulnerability themselves, and would only block 80 on those subscribers with unpatched IIS. Once you fixed your IIS server, you co

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          It's not port blocking that I'm that interested in. It's the forging RST packets that pisses me off. Any ISP that injects RST packets into a communication fraudlently can't be called "not a bad ISP". That's like an airline stopping a non-stop flight from New York to LA in Cleveland and stranding all of the passengers there because someone in the back farted a little too loudly. You certainly wouldn't call them "not a bad airline", regardless of how many non-stop flights they had that stopped in Clevelan

        • Re:geh (Score:4, Informative)

          by Cheeko ( 165493 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @11:32AM (#24737593) Homepage Journal

          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.

      • by noewun ( 591275 )

        I think the basic issue is that in the suburbs its easy to run the fiber based on the income generated. In the city where they'll need to do underground work, and possibly dig up sidewalks/streets its much more cost prohibitive compared to the customers it will get them.

        Dunno about that. NYC has FiOS all over the place. I don't have it, though, as I refuse to give Verizon any moreo of my money (they're my local phone company).

    • I live in a condo in one of the suburbs of Philadelphia where FiOS was specifically being rolled out to originally. I STILL cannot get FiOS even though people in the development across the street and in the development behind me can!

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      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.

      Where I live, I have only 1 option for internet. It is microwave broadcast. It is (supposedly) a 7Mb connect,the only thing is that after 1 gig of download they throttle you, then after 2 gig they throttle you again. I tried downloading a distro of Linux and it took me 7 days.

    • And here on the west coast (Western Washington), FIOS doesn't even exist. Hell, we can't even get dry-loop DSL.

      That's ok, though, Verizon. Just because we have Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo of America, uncountable .coms-- I'm sure nobody in this area works in the tech field and really cares about connection speeds. Go ahead and finish up installing in rural Texas and just get around to us when you feel ready, k?

    • 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.

      Isn't Comcast's headquarters in Philly? Hate to break it to you, but you'll never get FIOS in Comcast's back yard.

    • 9 Mbps is available here in Oklahoma City.

      You'd think somewhere in this country
      DOCSIS 3.0 would be deployed already...

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docsis#Speed_Table [wikipedia.org]

      Several countries have much faster net access,
      such as most of Finland, Norway, Japan.

      A few very small pilot areas here in the US
      have fiber to the curb.

      It is ALWAYS only rich neighborhoods.

      I do not know of a single fiber to the curb
      deployment in the US in a poor area, if you
      do plz let me know via reply.

    • I don't know what alternatives you have for access there (IE, who you're currently using), but here in Tampa it's basically Verizon FIOS and Bright House. While there may be something to say for FIOS's network speed, Bright House wasn't too bad when I used it, and their current HD TV line up and general cable service have some strong points over Verizon's [myspace.com]. Enough to where I'm tempted to switch back, at least until Verizon's HD channels start matching up with Bright House's.
  • Rest of the world (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:20AM (#24736527)

    Does anyone have comparable statistics for Europe and the relevant parts of Asia?

    • Re:Rest of the world (Score:5, Informative)

      by aadvancedGIR ( 959466 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:39AM (#24736827)

      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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Noryungi ( 70322 )

      I have an 8Mbps/1Mbps ADSL connection to the Internet here in Paris.

      My friends make fun of me. Most have got 18Mbps to 100Mpbs connections. At least one of my friends has got multiple connections.

  • Only 6.8Mbps? (Score:5, Informative)

    by adnonsense ( 826530 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:22AM (#24736565) Homepage Journal

    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: (Score:3, Informative)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      In the UK, broadband speeds are typically in the 8-24Mb/s range. I first visited the USA around a decade ago, and Internet speeds I saw advertised back then were much faster than anything I could get back home (where ISDN at 128Kb/s was the fastest and was incredibly expensive).
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      They do say median. Some areas, like rural sections, probably bring that down. And yes, there are a bunch of those areas on the east coast (though not as much as the mid-west).

      Here in NJ (east coast US) we have Verizon Fiber as an option. I'm personally on a 20Mbit connection and I think they go up to 50Mbit for consumer-level. There might be faster offerings for consumers but 20 is fast enough for me.

      • by nbvb ( 32836 )

        True enough ... I live in Cablevision territory (NJ also), and have a 30mbps downstream/5mbps upstream plan for $44.90/month. Can't beat that with a stick.

      • by sconeu ( 64226 )

        Lucky SOBs.

        I live in Los Angeles, and I get 768Kb. Cable would be about 4Mb.

      • Honestly, I'm not really sure why this was warranting front page space. It's sort of one of those newsflash: people in the developed world have easy access to phones sort of posts.

        Of course the east coast is going to have faster service than most of the rest of the country. There's a much higher population density in New England in particular, as well as much more money than most of the rest of the country.

        It would be shocking if that weren't the case.

        Around here, when I try to enter my address into Verizon

    • Re:Only 6.8Mbps? (Score:4, Informative)

      by whtmarker ( 1060730 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:32AM (#24736713) Homepage

      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.

    • I think I speak for all of the US when I say that I hate you. :-p Seriously though, that's about 1 hr 20 minutes full throttle on my DSL which is the fastest 2 way connection in my area (1.5 /384 or I could get 3m/56k cable and tie up a phoneline). Pretty sad considering I'm in a fairly populous area. PA sucks for broadband unless you live next to a Verizon building.
      • Well until recently I had a 1Mbps DSL which was plenty enough for my needs, but moving to a new place I found it had residential optical fiber, which costs about the same (not sure of the exact details, the first 5 months are free, but I think it works out to about US$40 a month). And if it's any consolation, trans-Pacific connections aren't exactly fast (300Kb / sec on average) so it's not like I'm maxing out the tube all the time.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      What do you do with that bandwidth? I have 15Mbps and can't seem to make use of it. Every once in a while I download an ISO or something, and it is helpful then. But I just don't do it often enough to care if it takes 1 minute or 5.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by adnonsense ( 826530 )
        Good question, I've only had it a week, and my router only does 54Mbps anyway... I can get good quality streaming video (probably not MPAA approved) from South Korea though, and there is lots of streaming content (TV, VOD) available for an extra fee (kind of like cable in reverse).
      • by arcade ( 16638 )

        With that kind of bandwidth you can start using the internet as your local network. It means you can put your nice little server in a nice colo, and use that from home. Or from your friends house - and not notice it very much that it isn't local.

        Or you can have your server at home, and when at your friends place, you just mount your homedir from your home-box straight into the filesystem of your friends box - and play, say the divx that's located in your homedir on your home-box. On his computer.

        Or, say

  • flawed test (Score:5, Insightful)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:26AM (#24736605) Homepage
    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 (Score:5, Informative)

      by MightyYar ( 622222 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:35AM (#24736755)

      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!

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Alien Being ( 18488 )

      My comcast connection just did 15.5 Mbit/s on the speedmatters test but it's just the result of comcast's traffic shaping policy. For a sustained transfer, the speed would be half that.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        That's not traffic shaping, that's "Powerboost". They are giving you 2-3x your subscribed speed for the first 15 seconds of download.

    • 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.

      Isn't that kind of the point? Access should be measured by what's affordable, not the super-expensive $2000/month fiber optic connection you COULD get if you could afford it. This isn't a race or a competition, it's a comparison of where broadband speeds are the highest. That's going to include economic conditions.

    • Those tests should be limited to those who pay for "all you can get".

      Can you point me to a broadband provider that has an "all you can get" plan? Everywhere I look, the plans are based on some sort of limited max upload/download speed. While some of those are pretty high, there is no "all you can get" plan that I can find.
      • I had an 'all you can get' plan with Cox for a few weeks, but then one day someone came to my door wanting to see why my modem was uncapped.

        It is totally possible to accidentally upload the exact payload necessary to lift my 3 meg limit to my cable modem.

    • by jc42 ( 318812 )

      Those tests should be limited to those who pay for "all you can get".

      But you can't get "all you can get" anywhere in the US that I know of.

      (Yeah, some ISPs do advertise "unlimited" plans. They lie a lot.)

    • by qoncept ( 599709 )
      If "cheapass" 512/512 (which I'd call SDSL, but that's beside the point) is $25 a month and 5mbit is $150, can you blame that guy for bringing down the average? Or is that maybe part of the point of these tests? Or, in my case, 256k SDSL is $75, but I went hardcore and got our small town telephone coop's top of the line 768k for $90 a month (plus $15 for a phone line I wouldn't otherwise have). So I'm doing my part to bring the average up(/down less).
  • Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by sesshomaru ( 173381 )
    You know who I thank for that? Hank Scorpio! [photobucket.com]
  • Duh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Wellington Grey ( 942717 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:28AM (#24736639) Homepage Journal
    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]
    • by blueZ3 ( 744446 )

      I was surprised to see Virgina on the list for just that reason. Sure there are some densely urban places in Virgina, but there's a lot of rural area there, too.

      But I agree that this reads like another report by "Captain Obvious"

    • small and dense = easier to wire.

      Apparently there's an optimum smallness and density. Verizon seems to be putting FiOS into the suburbs surrounding major cities faster than into the major cities themselves.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        That's because major cities have poor people in them who can't afford FiOS, whereas suburbs are comparatively rich.

      • Might it also be at least partly due to the expectation that the people living in suburbs of a major city probably have a larger disposable income than the people living in the crowded urban core?

      • That is partly because it is a lot more expensive to run cable of any kind where almost everything is paved over (streets, sidewalks, buildings, parking lots) versus an area where all you have to do is dig a trench, put your cable/conduit in, fill the trench back up.
        Ok, yeah there are places where you have to dig up part of the street in the suburbs, but not for the whole length of cable you are putting in.
  • check this out: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by amnezick ( 1253408 ) * on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:30AM (#24736667) Homepage
    In Romania UPC gives 20mbps for ~30$/mo ... and it is considered a developing country.
  • so far behind (Score:5, Informative)

    by sam_paris ( 919837 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:37AM (#24736795)
    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..
    • by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:52AM (#24737041) Journal

      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...

  • by GiovanniZero ( 1006365 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:38AM (#24736801) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • by iguana ( 8083 ) *

      Can I come live with you?

      Here in Boise, ID, I can get 20Mbps down via Qwest but it's a piddly 896kbps up. That's *kilo*bits per second. And it costs US$100/mo (before taxes, fees, and the CEO's boat payments).

      Every time my downstream speed goes up, my upstream speed goes down. Went from a 3Mbps/1.5Mbps DSL to 8Mbps/1Mbps cable. Now it's 20Mbps and 896kbps. WTF?

      • That's basically a configuration decision. Upstream does matter, but for most people they're noticing the downstream more than the upstream.

        My connection here is 1.5mbps up and 768kbps down, and I'm fine with that. Most of the issues I've had with speed on the net were related to my antiquated computer or the particular server rather than my actual connection. It's pretty uncommon for the bottle neck to be my bandwidth, if it's not the first two it's the number of connections in use.

        They definitely could bu

  • by shdowhawk ( 940841 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:39AM (#24736819)

    So far it seems that the fastest AND most affordable internet (combo) here in the states is available in the Cincinnati area (that I've personally seen). It's got 3 major cities within about 1.5 hours, one of the busiest airports in the mid-west (I'm still EST time zone), a few major train rails and highways 70,71 and 75 all very near by. This makes it a prime location for major companies, except that there aren't THAT many (proctor and gamble is here for example).

    I mention this because there aren't too many nerdy types like me out here.. except that they set up the broadband out here to handle major *potential* commercial needs.

    So here I sit paying $50 a month for "20 meg download" (which is literally about 2.4-2.5 megabytes per second at maxed connection). That's the upgraded package. Normally it's $40 for "10 meg download"... but 10$ more for double the connection? Easy choice for me! What is interesting is that my speeds actually can hit that through usenet / bittorrents.

    Just curious, do these speeds at that low of a price exist anywhere else out there for that cheap? I've not yet heard of that elsewhere. I use Insight Broadband [insightbb.com]. Note: Internet speeds are great, but the commercials and customer service / "pay-by-internet" really really suck.

  • by mr_mischief ( 456295 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:42AM (#24736881) Journal

    Three of the top five are among the smallest states in the Union by total land area. They are mostly densely populated, too.

    Virginia has the extra bonus that it has suburbs of Washington, D.C. and several government installations. The Pentagon is actually not in D.C. (although its postal address says it is), but is in Arlington. The FBI and CIA are headquartered in the state. One of the largest USMC bases is there, along with the DEA and FBI training centers. There's a Federal Reserve Bank. Qimonda has a DRAM fab there, and Genworth Financial is headquartered in the state. Of course it has all kinds of telecom infrastructure.

    • NoVa used to be the home of PSInet, WorldCom, AOL, CAIS, XO, Ardent, UUNet, ... there's a whole lot of connectivity in the Reston / Ashburn / Dulles corridor heading out 7, as there's still a massive number of tech companies out there. And it's also the current home of 3 of the 5 peering points of MAE-East.

  • Duh. (Score:5, Funny)

    by clone53421 ( 1310749 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:44AM (#24736919) Journal

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by San-LC ( 1104027 )
      Good thing I use 802.11gore to connect without wires. Otherwise, I don't know how I would get Internet in New Orleans.
  • It's a lot easier to connect everyone to a network when they aren't spread out as much as they are in many western states.

  • by Quixote ( 154172 ) * on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:47AM (#24736947) Homepage Journal
    RI can be covered by a handful of WiFi APs , so that's no surprise.... ;-)
  • Ok I didn't RTFA but doesn't it only really matter for what municipality you live in, and not the state/region average? In that scenario, my service far outpaces every one listed in the summary, at somewhere around 15Mbps for $25/month.
  • Oblig Matrix... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gandhi_2 ( 1108023 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:52AM (#24737049) Homepage
    What good is a phone call...if youâ(TM)re unable to speak?

    I'm glad someone has 6.8 Mbs...just hope they don't actually use it. DPI, caps, throttling....these speeds only apply if you use them for services the telco wants you to use them on.

    Millions in gov't subsidies and right-of-ways thru your property and all I got was this lousy duopoly.

  • hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nomadic ( 141991 ) <nomadicworld@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Monday August 25, 2008 @10:52AM (#24737051) Homepage
    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.
  • 12mb for $25 (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm paying $25 for 12mbps in Tennessee.

  • GREED! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Want to know why we have slow broadband? GREED! Telco's have figured out we will all open our wallets at a certain speed and are trying to milk us for every penny without upgrading their infrastructure. Why don't you have 100mb fibre at your house? Because the Telco's want to spend that $60+ per month on ferrying around their CEO in a chartered jet rather than to provide the service your paying for. Its rather comical that the Cable companies and telco's are screaming about bandwidth when we have the mos

  • of course (Score:2, Funny)

    by jacquesm ( 154384 )

    East coast bandwidth should be fastest in the USA, I'd be surprised if it was fastest in Guatemala.

  • Of course they do. The east is the leading edge of the continent as the earth spins eastward, the northeast even more so - so the electrons are moving the fastest as the earth spins in that direction. Rhode island of course beat the larger Maine NH and MA because it's so tiny the electrons don't have to go so far. And I know what's next - then why didn't tiny CT fare as well? Aha! It's much hillier than RI! Delaware? Small and flat. See? By the time they get from the northeast to the rest of the co

  • In your face, California!

  • "High speed" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mrbah ( 844007 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @11:38AM (#24737695)

    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.

  • Jersey? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Baavgai ( 598847 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @11:48AM (#24737811) Homepage

    I live in Jersey. If the level of service here is considered to be in the Top 5, the rest of you lot are screwed.

  • by philspear ( 1142299 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @12:20PM (#24738253)

    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?

  • its like the article on slashdot awhile back comparing high speed in the far east to the usa: pointless

    what you are really comparing is population densities

    notice something interesting about the states listed? they are all small, compact, and densely populated

    new york state, for example, is sparsely populated, mostly, but i'll bet you speeds in the city and on long island are as high as anywhere else

    so new york state isn't listed, or california, but that doesn't mean a damn thing, because all you are doing is taking note that these states have large areas that are low in population density, and therefore broadband penetration

  • by repetty ( 260322 ) on Monday August 25, 2008 @12:33PM (#24738425) Homepage

    After you get up to a couple megabits a second of download speed, who cares?

    What I would REALLY appreciate is some upload speed. I understand why the situation is the way that it is ("All your base are belong to us.") but I'd love to be able to do really high quality voice conferencing.

    Also, I notice that no one here is complaining about quality, per se. That's good and it's a pretty big difference from attitudes ten years ago.

    --Richard

Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white socks.

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