# Lifestyles & Discussion > Science & Technology >  This is a national disgrace!  internet speeds in USA

## Nicklibergamer34

This is a national disgrace! Many developed countries have faster internet connections than we do. Are Americans unwilling to invest in better infrastructure for the  internet? When will America enter the 21st Century? Seriously this is ridiculous!

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## specsaregood

not getting your porn fast enough?   Most of those developed countries don't have the sheer landmass either.   I suspect that map would look differently if they limited it to urban/suburban areas.

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## helmuth_hubener

Have you ever actually *been* to these other developed countries?  If you had, and if you had used or tried to use the internet there -- that is, if you actually knew something about the topic -- you might have a very different view of the topic.  The internet situation in the US is very good, in my opinion.  Quite nice.

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## juleswin

Why anyone needs a residential internet connection speed of more than 2 Mbps is beyond me. I currently have a 3 mbps internet connect service which actually delivers 1.5 ish mbps and I do everything I want to do just fine, I stream netflix with virtually no interruptions, play online PS3 games with the most problem being a few dips in frame rate and on top of that I am sharing my connection with 2 other apts in my complex who again are doing just fine with the speed. 

But then again, its not the nation's problem to deal with internet connection speed and also, I shouldn't be responding to you cos you are a troll

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## TonySutton

Google has a solution

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## luctor-et-emergo

I just measured 50.4Mbps here. Pretty decent I think.

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## tangent4ronpaul

From the title I thought this thread was about sir golfs alot....

-t

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## oyarde

America will no longer be a national disgrace when the Fed govt starts doing about nothing as it should .

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## green73

US internet is terrible and it's largely due to fascistic laws that protect the big providers.

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## jllundqu

> This is a national disgrace! Many developed countries have faster internet connections than we do. Are Americans unwilling to invest in better infrastructure for the  internet? When will America enter the 21st Century? Seriously this is ridiculous!


Are you proposing the government (the same government that spies on everything you do) take up the task of building a massive internet cyberstructure to the tune of billions of wasted dollars?

How is this preferable to organic growth in business whereby the internet will become more accessible without force and taxation?

Oh I forgot.... trolls don't answer their own posts...

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## helmuth_hubener

> US internet is terrible and it's largely due to fascistic laws that protect the big providers.


Why do you think that?  Where else have you experienced the Internet, under what circumstances, and where in the US have you experienced the Internet?

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## juleswin

> US internet is terrible and it's largely due to fascistic laws that protect the big providers.


www.speedtest.net

I would like to know what you consider to be terrible internet speed.



That is what I get on campus. You can literally download a lifetime worth of whatever it is people download in 2mins . Yes, I know its anecdotal evidence but the speed is available to anyone who is willing to pay for it.

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## luctor-et-emergo

> www.speedtest.net
> 
> I would like to know what you consider to be terrible internet speed.
> 
> 
> 
> That is what I get on campus. You can literally download a lifetime worth of whatever it is people download in 2mins . Yes, I know its anecdotal evidence but the speed is available to anyone who is willing to pay for it.


I'm paying 30EUR/40$/month for half that speed and 40 channels of cable TV.

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## FunkBuddha

> That is what I get on campus. You can literally download a lifetime worth of whatever it is people download in 2mins . Yes, I know its anecdotal evidence but the speed is available to anyone who is willing to pay for it.


You need better Internetz.

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## juleswin

> You need better Internetz.


So you get to open Google search 0.0000001 sec faster than me? Whoopty doo 

But I have to ask, who(residential users) really needs more than 10 mbps? I mean what are you doing on the internet that you need such a break neck internet speed?

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## green73

> *19 State Laws That Stop Your City From Installing Blazing Fast Internet
> *
> 
> According to FCC data released in 2013, over 39 million Americans have less than 2 wired broadband providers they can get broadband service from.
> 
> Our team at Broadband Now has been obsessed with this fact because without a competitive market, companies have little incentive to treat their customers well or improve their infrastructure leading to poor customer service [1] and questionable business practices.[2]
> 
> Lucky for some consumers, municipalities across the country have been stepping into help underserved populations get access to better more competitive broadband service.
> 
> While this introduction of new competition sounds like a win for consumers, incumbent providers have been leveraging their lobbying power at the state level to limit what municipalities can and can’t do.


cont.
http://broadbandnow.com/report/munic...nd-roadblocks/

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## green73

> Why do you think that?  Where else have you experienced the Internet, under what circumstances, and where in the US have you experienced the Internet?


UK. 50mb/s. That's on the slow side for Europe.

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## green73

@ the speeds of socialist state schools.

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## FunkBuddha

I have a 4G connection to the internet with a 20GB cap. It's my only option because I live out in the country. I live out in the country because I'd rather be doing $#@! outside without some busy body bitching about whatever crazy $#@! I might do. Last night my boys and I pissed in an outdoor fish tank we're trying to cycle. The night before that I squeezed off about 100 rounds of 7.62.

Fat internet pipes are for fat folks and their fat families to sit around on their fat asses and watch Netflix on all of their fat TVs. How's that for a generalization?

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## CPUd

> So you get to open Google search 0.0000001 sec faster than me? Whoopty doo 
> 
> But I have to ask, who(residential users) really needs more than 10 mbps? I mean what are you doing on the internet that you need such a break neck internet speed?


People running remote desktops and cloud apps are gonna need more and more as these services become more mainstream.  Think of something like video editing on a remote machine, where the response is faster than what it would be if you were doing it on your own machine.

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## brandon

Current speeds are adequate for just about everything. Im not going to complain about needing to wait 15 minuted to download a pirated hd movie. Streaming 4k, if it ever takes off, i think would be the next reason to widen our tubes.

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## brandon

I wish theyd do something about that pesky speed of light limitation so i could get better ping time to game servers though.

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## heavenlyboy34

lolz@thread

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## helmuth_hubener

> UK. 50mb/s. That's on the slow side for Europe.


Interesting, thanks.  The UK does seem to have a good internet situation, based on my limited experience there.

The US is just not horrible, though, internet-wise.  I would not characterize it as horrible.  I would say it's very good.

Statistics like this don't give a whole picture, but here are some:

http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/

The UK averages 29, US and Germany 27... it's all about the same.

I don't doubt that *things would be much better with a free market in internet.*  However, relatively speaking, the US does have a freer internet market than many of these countries with supposedly faster internet.  It works pretty well for us.  The UK, Germany, the US, these are the places where things actually work.  I'm sure Luctor loves Spain, and Spain does seem to have fast internet for some reason (probably big gov't spending on the project), but consider this: can you even get land-based internet, or even electricity, out in the Catalonian countryside?  No, you cannot.  Now look at the geographies involved.  Catalonia is not even that far from civilization!  Contrast that to Wyoming.  What if Spain had a Wyoming, 500 miles away from anything and everything?  Would it have 7 megs of _average_ internet speed?  Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!



So basically, we're just fine.  Let the market work.  To the extent there are barriers and impediments to the market, tear them down, of course.  It would only make things better -- either increasing internet quality, or _freeing up wasted resources to do more important and valuable things._  That last possibility is not insignificant.  Internet is not the only valuable thing to people; there's always tradeoffs.  Look at Romania on that map there, clocking in at 55 megs.  How many windows did they have to break to get that?  Do you really think the first priority of the poor people of Romania -- per capita income, $8k per year -- was to build a cutting edge internet infrastructure?  Next up: a Maglev train network!  These things are distortions.  They are a curse to the countries whose politicians have done them, not a boon.  They are wealth destruction in action.

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## acptulsa

> I wish theyd do something about that pesky speed of light limitation so i could get better ping time to game servers though.


Well don't let the government at it.  Government would legislate the speed of light down to the speed of sound and set up radar traps to enforce it.

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## FunkBuddha

> @ the speeds of socialist state schools.


Yep.



UT’s Bandwidth Hits 100 Gigabits Per Second Milestone
JUNE 20, 2014

For some, getting on the Internet can be a blast.

Now, thanks to the Bandwidth for Leadership in Advancing Science and Technology project—known as BLAST—it can also be faster for computer users at UT.

A lot faster.

“This is quite an accomplishment, for both UT and for the researchers who use the network,” said Victor Hazlewood, chief operating officer at the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences and the National Science Foundation’s principal investigator on BLAST. “This really positions UT well to continue to be at the forefront of innovation.”

The upgrade, completed May 25, is a combined effort between JICS and UT’s Office of Information Technology and makes it possible for UT users to make use of Internet speeds up to 100 gigabits per second.

For comparison, most research institutions have Internet speeds around 10 gigabits per second.

“UT’s Top 25 initiatives included improvements in infrastructure and expansion of services for research,” said Larry Jennings, associate chief information officer in OIT and BLAST co-principal investigator. “BLAST is an initiative that demonstrates the campus’ commitment to that overarching goal.”

In proposing the plan last year, planners said that the aim was to “improve science and engineering researcher productivity and facilitate scientific discovery.”

Achieving that goal would have other beneficial effects, too, such as the ability to move large amounts of data, whose sheer size would have made the task prohibitively slow before the upgrade.

“The BLAST project is another step toward UT’s goal of being a top university,” said Hazlewood. “UT is the first member of the Southern Crossroads research and education consortium to upgrade its wide area network connection to 100 gigabits per second.”

The BLAST project was completed in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which provided the long-haul fiber optic infrastructure supporting such speeds.

All told, the project cost $4.5 million, with funding coming from the National Science Foundation, UT, and ORNL.

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## Ronin Truth

Perhaps we're just not allowed to go any faster than the NSA can collect data.

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## pcosmar

I live secluded in a very rural backward corner of the country.. And have their cheapest DSL. They do offer higher speeds (at higher cost)
I can still stream video (most of the time) and play WoW.

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## Danke

Speed?!  I just wish I had the Internet.

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## acptulsa

> Speed?!  I just wish I had the Internet.


Is that why your posts are always so brief?  How do you post, by sending semaphore signals to a wired transcriptionist across the valley?

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## Danke

> Is that why your posts are always so brief?  How do you post, by sending semaphore signals to a wired transcriptionist across the valley?


...

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## american.swan

I'm in the center of Seoul. My home desktop computer bandwidth test (speedtest.net) is 94Mbps down and 95Mbps up. 

Using my 5ghz home WIFI connection, My Galaxy S4 gets 18Mbps through my VPN subscription to another country in Asia.

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## Danke

> I'm in the center of Seoul.


My condolences.

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## Natural Citizen

Here is what I have at the moment. Even though I pay for the fastest plan and am in that dark green zone in the op's post. Of course, it's 9:30 too so...don't know if that matters much or not. 

I've tested my connection before and had twice as good results. Plus I have a lot of things running at the moment too. I'm not really an internet wizard so I don't know.

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## specsaregood

Mine is pretty much exactly what I pay for.   Never really needed anymore from it.

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## acptulsa

> ...


O?  Is the beginning of some ode?

Sorry you're reduced to Morse Code, dude.  .... .- -. --. / .. -. / - .... . .-. .

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## Czolgosz

Ty OP.  This is clear evidence that free markets simply don't work.

I want others to pay more taxes, right now, and fix this $#@!ed up capitalist garbage.

Don't forget to tip your waitress.

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## Spikender

Turkey sandwich.

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## green73

Comcast, verizon. I guess that's one too many to be considered Soviet.

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## green73

> Interesting, thanks.  The UK does seem to have a good internet situation, based on my limited experience there.
> 
> The US is just not horrible, though, internet-wise.  I would not characterize it as horrible.  I would say it's very good.
> 
> Statistics like this don't give a whole picture, but here are some:
> 
> http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/
> 
> The UK averages 29, US and Germany 27... it's all about the same.
> ...


Good points, and I agree. It's just make my blood boil, the cronyism that limits choice and speeds.

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## Root

Works for me.

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## juleswin

That is what I work with at home, but I only pay $12 and change after taxes with no bundle or anything. So I am not complaining since it satisfies all my internet needs.

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## helmuth_hubener

> Good points, and I agree. It's just make my blood boil, the cronyism that limits choice and speeds.


Yeah, I used to work for a small ISP, fighting the good fight I suppose.  _Sometimes_ you have more choices than you think.  You just have to know how to search for your options.

If one was in the Western US, he might try seeing if there is a Mammoth Networks partner nearby.


You mention Comcast, and Comcast territory is more out east and hugging the west coast, plus some metros like Houston and Denver, so I'm guessing you're one of those places, and if so, good news: you _probably_ have lots of choices!  I used to have tools where I could put in your phone number and see what you qualify for, but those outdated links are dead to me now.  Anyway, if you qualify for DSL, you can almost surely get standalone from any number of ISPs, not just the monopoly phone company.

You can check this link out for a beginning slice of some of your most mainstream options, just be aware there are lots more:

https://www.inmyarea.com/high-speed-2

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## RonPaulIsGreat

100 megabit download 4 upload. I'd give up 75 megabits down for 25 upload. The service is very unbalanced, but that is the only game in town.

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## Suzanimal

Oh man, I'm getting ripped off.

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## MacSaxe

I guess internet speeds are pretty varied no matter where you are - I saw UK mentioned earlier as being half-decent for web speed... hah, I wish!

When I'm in the UK, our property which is rural and uses 90 y/o cables gets at best 1MB - but if there's rain or a puff of wind it drops well below dial-up speeds. Our record was 0.018MB on the speed test - it was so funny, even getting the speed test page to load took about 5 minutes.

I say funny because we pay for 10MB - and the phone company says these low speeds are "acceptable" on our rural infrastructure.

In CA, we get on average 20-30MB so we just go wild, watch youtube, stream movies - you name it, it's a bandwidth-a-thon

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