Internet Speeds in the US Are 15 Years Behind Those in South Korea

Broadband speeds in the US lag way behind countries like South Korea or Japan, a new study by the Communications Workers of America shows. The study showed that the average speed for Internet connections in the US is at 5.1 Mbps just 1.6 Mbps higher than two years ago. At this growth rate it would take the US 15 years to catch up to the current average speed in South Korea, the country with the fastest broadband connections in the world.

“The results of this third annual Speed Matters survey of Internet speeds show that the U.S. has not made significant improvement in the speeds at which residents connect to the Internet. The average download speed for the nation was 5.1 megabits per second (mbps) and the average upload speed was 1.1 mbps. This was only a nine-tenths of a megabit per second increase (from 4.2 mbps to 5.1 mbps) since last year,” the report said.

The report also broke down the speeds by state, finding that several more densely populated states ranked high above the national average, with Delaware having the fastest Internet connections at an average of 9.9 Mbps, doubling in the past two years. Rhode Island was close with 9.79 Mbps followed by New Jersey with 8.86 Mbps. Towards the bottom of the list are the more remote or loosely populated states like Hawaii, Alaska or Montana.

That being said, even the fastest states still trail far behind South Korea's 20.4 Mbps or even Japan's 15.8 Mbps. In fact, when compared to the rest of the world, the United States ranks 28th in average Internet connection speeds. The report does, however, have some drawbacks and it isn't exactly scientific. It is also issued by a telecom workers’ union so it isn't precisely unbiased. Some regions were excluded and some states had more data than others and the report also bands together the speeds between 768 Kbps and 6 Mbps even though there is a significant difference in performance between the two.