As our nation has become more familiar with the Internet and its many applications, it has demonstrated a demand for more robust broadband service.
Consider the many innovations and breakthroughs in healthcare, education, and workforce development – to name a few – that have been a direct result of advances broadband Internet technology.
Yet, we’re falling behind in developing the proper platform needed to continue moving forward and spurring innovation. While a recent Technology Policy Institute report shows steadily increasing download speeds by all countries analyzed, the U.S. falls between 11th and 14th in the world in that category, depending on the study.
More disheartening is a Speedtest.net study that shows the U.S. not only provides towards the low end of a group of countries in which consumers receive between 6 and 8 Mbps, on average, but it had one of the worst increases in download speed over the past year of any nation.
Two additional studies estimated the median download speed in the U.S. to be between 2.3 Mbps and 4 Mbps. An Akamai regional analysis of download speeds over an 18-hour span shows North America, on average, will only hit 4 Mbps at somewhere around midnight.
It gets even worse regarding upload speeds. A number of studies shows the average U.S. upload speed to be somewhere between 371 Kbps and 435 Kbps. Hardly adequate for the many potential telemedicine applications and streamlined government services we keep talking about.
Granted, improving broadband speeds is not an end in itself, as bandwidth is only one factor determining the quality of an Internet connection. But the point remains that Americans are demanding more from their service providers and not getting it.
This is just one of many reasons why the Knight Center of Digital Excellence emphasizes how critical the $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funding is to our nation’s development. American consumers are finding new ways to innovate as the number of available devices, programs and Internet services increase. What they need – and are demanding – is a more robust platform to do it on.
