DSL Speed Test: Why Is Theirs Faster?

Bits readers have a serious case of broadband envy. I’ve been writing about the debate about how the government might encourage more high-speed Internet use and you’ve complained loudly that people in other countries have faster, cheaper, more widely available broadband service. Even customer service representatives of Internet service providers overseas are nicer too.

I don’t know about manners, but it’s easy to find examples that American’s broadband is second-rate:

In Japan, broadband service running at 150 megabits per second (Mbps) costs $60 a month. The fastest service available now in the United States is 50 Mbps at a price of $90 to $150 a month.

In London, $9 a month buys 8 Mbps service. In New York, broadband starts at $20 per month, for 1 Mbps.

In Iceland, 83 percent of the households are connected to broadband. In the United States, the adoption rate is 59 percent.

There’s more than just envy at stake here. President Obama campaigned on a promise of fast broadband service for all. On the White House Web site, he writes “America should lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access.” And the recent stimulus bill requires the Federal Communications Commission to create a national broadband plan in order to make high-speed Internet service both more available and more affordable.

I’ve spent the last week trolling through reports and talking to people who study broadband deployment around the world to see what explains the faster and cheaper service in many countries. We’ll start with where the United States isn’t doing quite so badly: the basic speed of broadband service.

If you take out the countries that have made significant investment in fiber optic networks — Japan, Korea and Sweden — the United States is in the middle of the pack when it comes to network speed.

The large European countries have average download speeds ranging from 3.2 Mbps in Italy to 6.4 Mbps in Germany, according to a study by the Saïd Business School at Oxford. The United States has an average speed of 5.2 Mbps. The study looked at speeds in May 2008, as measured by consumers checking their connections on a Web site called Speedtest.net.

Japan was the standout, with an average speed of 16.7 Mbps. Sweden was 8.8 Mbps. And Korea averaged 7.2 Mbps.

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Arizona ranks poorly in Internet Speed

In a world where time equals money, Arizona has relatively slow Internet connections that could have real-life business and quality-of-life implications, according to a study done by PCMag.com.

Arizona ranked No. 34 among the 50 states for Internet speed at an average 505 kilobits per second (kbps), according to the survey which used a custom-designed SurfSpeed application (a utility that grabs pages from several popular websites to measure actual Internet surfing speed) and pored through data from over 17,000 unique IP addresses.

The state with the fastest Internet speed was Nevada, at 781 kbps. The state you don’t want to get stuck in is New Mexico, where the average SurfSpeed is 322 kbps.

Another finding in the third annual PCMag.com survey is the cable connections are 47 percent faster with phone company DSL. Further, 61 percent of users with cable connections said they were satisfied with the service, where just 27 percent of DSL users said they were satisfied.

Source

DSL Speed Broadband: Gap between best and worst performing countries in Europe narrowing

Broadband penetration in Europe continues to grow, from 18.2% in July 2007 to up to 21.7% in July 2008, according to a report published today by the European Commission. The report also shows the gap between EU countries narrowing, from 28.4 percentage points in July 2007 to 27.7 this July. With 17 million fixed broadband lines laid in a year, today's figures show high-speed internet in the EU is more widespread and faster, while mobile broadband is starting to take off, with 6.9% penetration. Three quarters of broadband lines in the EU have download speeds of 2 millions of bits per second (Mbps) and above, a speed that supports TV over the Internet, for example.
"Broadband growth remains strong, with the top EU countries firmly remaining world leaders in broadband penetration," said EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding. "I am also glad that other countries in Europe are catching up. Under the European Economic Recovery Plan presented by the Commission this week, we plan to channel a further € 1 billion of EU funding into High-speed Internet infrastructures. I expect that this additional measure, together with a strong policy emphasis on effective competition and further market opening, will pave the way for 'Broadband for all Europeans' by 2010; and for 'High-speed Internet for all Europeans' by 2015."

New figures published by the European Commission today show that, in spite of reduced growth perspectives for the economy at large, broadband growth has continued in the last year throughout the EU, with an increase of 19.23% between July 2008 and July 2007. On 1 July 2008 there were over 107 million fixed broadband lines in the EU, of which 17 million lines have been added since July 2007. The rate of growth was highest in Malta (6.7 lines per 100 inhabitants), Germany (5.1 per 100 inhabitants) and Cyprus (4.9 per 100 inhabitants) and lowest in Finland (1.9 per 100 inhabitants) and Portugal (1.0 per 100 inhabitants).

Globally, Denmark and the Netherlands continue to be world leaders in broadband, with penetration over 35%. Nine EU countries (Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, Belgium, France, and Germany) are above the United States which stands at 25% according to OECD June 2008 statistics.

The gap between the strongest (Denmark 37.2%) and weakest broadband performers (Bulgaria 9.5%) remains significant but is decreasing for the first time (penetration in Denmark was 34.1% in July 2007 while in Bulgaria it was 5.7%). The gap can mainly be explained by lack of competition and regulatory weaknesses. For example, while the market share for incumbent fixed broadband operators is beginning to stabilise at around 45%, in some countries (Austria, Bulgaria, France, Ireland, Lithuania, Romania and Spain) it has increased since July 2007. These main obstacles to broadband growth remain to be addressed through the reform of the EU's telecoms rules, which is currently under discussion by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers (MEMO/08/739).

The Commission also published the first figures showing fixed broadband speeds, which is an important indicator in a knowledge-based society. 74.8% of reported lines in the EU are in the range of 2 Mbps and above: 62% between 2 and 10 Mbps, 12.8% above 10 Mbps. Greater data transmission speeds generally provide customers with more and better choice at a lower price per megabit. Extremely fast connections (up to 100 Mbps or beyond) such as fibre only cover 1.4% of European internet subscribers.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is the EU's main broadband technology, with nearly 86 million lines. However, DSL growth continues to decrease rapidly, slowed by 10.9% compared to July 2007, to the benefit of other fixed broadband technologies like cable, fibre to the home (FTTH) and wireless local loops.

As an illustration of growing infrastructure-based competition, unbundled local loop based products continue to grow at a high rate, largely as a result of successful regulation in the past couple of years. 65.3% of all alternative operators' DSL lines (24.7 million lines) are either fully or partially unbundled, compared to 45.4% in July 2007. This is at the expense of important types of wholesale access for alternative operators, whose share of bitstream access (5.9 million lines) and resale (6.9 million lines) continues to fall.

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Mobiles will help broadband speed ahead as copper wiring reaches the end of the road

It is the digital equivalent of a power blackout and the prospect is already worrying ministers and government planners - at some point in the next decade, the copper telephone network will run out of capacity.

Confronting the problem is expected to lie at the heart of Lord Carter of Barnes's Digital Britain review of communications policy, due early next year, with efforts to solve it focused on an unlikely source: mobile phones.

The Communications Minister is yet to reveal his plans, but he has been dropping heavy hints, writing in The Times this month that he wants to help to develop “mobile and wireless services that can do for broadband and video what they have done for the spoken word”.

His goal is to kick-start an auction of “fourth-generation” mobile technology, using a block of spectrum previously set aside for digital television. The 4G technology, known in the industry as LTE, or Long-Term Evolution, can deliver download speeds of ten megabits or more - five times quicker than a standard fixed broadband connection.

Joachim Horn, chief technology officer of T-Mobile International, believes that there is a need for fourth-generation technology because the mobile internet has been disappointing. “We are not able to deliver the speed and consumer experience for the applications coming out,” he said. “We need to accommodate higher use at a lower price.”

However, while the public sees fixed and mobile phone connections as quite separate, in Lord Carter's mind the two are linked. The governmental worry is that BT and other internet providers are not afraid enough - or in official speak “sufficiently incentivised” - to invest in upgrading fixed-line connections.

The risk is that, by the middle of the decade, internet capacity will stop increasing for many homes, just at the point where television and film are flying around the network. In October, 30.6million BBC programmes were streamed over the internet, which sounds impressive but is still a fraction of the total number of programme viewings for a typical night's television.

The threat of new, easy-to-deploy high-speed mobile technology will help. BT has promised to upgrade up to 40per cent of homes to fibre optic technology - where data is transmitted down filaments of glass at the speed of light - but the rest of the UK will be stuck on copper.

BT will use a new standard, ADSL2+, which promises speeds of “up to 24 megabits” - in theory ten times faster than the two-megabit standard of today. However, theory does not always match up to practice and other internet providers that use BT's network may not want to join it in investing to match its speed.

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DSL Speed has increased

My DSL Speed has increased dramatically as of late and I have the test to prove it!

Wireless, Computer, Broadband and Internet Speed Test has also improved. I like to tweak my settings to increase my speed and it has payed off!

As always you can check you DSL Speed with the provided link on top and don't be surprised your Internet connection speed is as fast as a T1 Line!

DSL Speed Test

How fast is your Internet connection? Do you have fios and wonder why your speed is slow and how to fix it or troubleshooting? My computer speed is constantly slow and have called my broadband company to check my Broadband Speed and do a test. I used to use a modem with AOL (America Online), remember how slow your Internet used to be?

Internet Speed

DSL Speed Test

Broadband Speed Test

Check how fast or slow your High Speed Internet Connection is now!

Speed Test

Don't let your DSL company give you less spead than advertised. Test It!