Jay, as a Canadian I'd be glad to switch places with you.
We're 39th and 41st in download (6.16) and upload (1.10) speeds.
:-(

Mike

Jerry, did you read that the U.S. was 28th? Yes, the U.S. has a definite problem compared to the 27 countries above it!

Insofar as AT&T is concerned, they are upgrading me to optical fiber as well (18Mbps). That should boost things bit (fingers crossed).

Mike, I feel your pain!

Jay, I live in the county so real high speed is only a dream for me.
My internet connection is a wireless service (i.e. microwave) and my Speedtest results are 1.19 download and 0.28 upload.
Still want my "pain"?
:-(

Mike

I just tested my Time Warner / Road Runner High Speed Cable Internet connection using Speedtest. I live North of New York City .

My results are:

Download speed: 7.59 Mb/s

Upload speed: 0.49 Mb/s

I was speaking recently to a Town Supervisor in another town who told me that each town works out monopolies with cable providers so that only one gets the local contracts for each town. That way competition like Verizon FIOS, etc is eliminated and the cable company that gets the monopoly can provide poor TV reception, leave old cables in place, add new customers without having to upgrade anything. Buy hey, that's the American way. "Love it or Leave It" as they say on Time Warner's corporate TV news channel - CNN

John

I'm way out in the sticks too (do a google map of hobart ny and see!) but Time Warner recently gave me a free upgrade to 5.1M down 768K up, so i can't feel too unpleased with them. Really, that's plenty for almost all home users. 10 years ago that sort of connection would have run me $1800/month. However, anything above that speed and the price skyrockets, particularly if i want faster up speeds. Anything above 1M up and the price goes up to the $400 range.

Meanwhile, $dayjob in a metropolitan area recently installed a 100M/100M cable service for something ridiculously cheap like $99/month.

"Jerry, did you read that the U.S. was 28th? Yes, the U.S. has a definite problem compared to the 27 countries above it!"Yeah, I looked at the stats and my reaction is... "Why isn't Hong Kong number one? A small country with a high population density should be top of the list?"

...Jerry

PS: Where the heck are the Aland Islands? *grin*

LOL, Mike I said I feel your pain, nothing about wanting it. ;o)

Kelly, I agree. But when it comes time to upload a video to my site for a client to preview, it takes forever. The longer to project, the longer the upload time.

Jay, quite true. But if you're uploading a clip for a client that doesn't really fall under the tag of "most home users' needs".

Back when i had the video sharing site running my upload speed was only 384Kbps, but it still managed to pump out about 4GB a day to visitors. Since most of the videos were about 10MB that was about 400 views per day. Not bad for a little 'home user' connection!

OK,
So why don't you all go to Speedtest (linked above) and each post your results here like I did. Give your general location. According to Speedtest, the satisfaction results for Time Warner's Road Runner service is 3.5 out of 5.

John

Mine came out to 4.8M down 610K up, but i'm sure the actual value is quite a bit higher. I still run an active web/email/ftp server here and that's always eating up a good portion of the line.

Area ... Hobart is in a section of the state that the Native Americans never settled because it was considered too hard to get to and too hard to live in. Lots of folks i know still think that about the area. ;)

I was speaking recently to a Town Supervisor in another town who told me that each town works out monopolies with cable providers so that only one gets the local contracts for each town. That way competition like Verizon FIOS, etc is eliminated and the cable company that gets the monopoly can provide poor TV reception, leave old cables in place, add new customers without having to upgrade anything.

Either your town super is lying or misinformed. Yes, cable companies negotiate with towns/villages/etc (it's always announced in the local papers in the legal section when their contract needs renewal) BUT that's only cable companies ("cable" being the specific word. Your stuff comes in to your house on a cable, not a fiber, yes it's THAT picky! Phone are the same though). Verizon isn't cable, neither is DirectTV, AT&T, etc. They don't count. The reason they don't put their services in your area is because they don't want to, not because they can't. That's why we don't have any cable out here is because it's not worth the $$. Same reason there's no Verizon.

re: USA being 28.

USA is ~3.5million square miles with a population of ~300,000,000. EU is ~3.9million square miles with a population of ~830,000,000. More people in roughly the same area makes outing up lines much, much cheaper. so it makes a lot of sense. Better chance you'll be in a metro area with higher quality lines. It's like if you took a piece of fiber cable & stretched it between you & your neighbor. Statically speaking, that's farther then the neighbors in the EU, etc. Plus with less rural areas dialup doesn't effect small areas as much because it can't drag down the average. It's kind of annoying that the site doesn't say how they collect their data. IE do they ask people to test themselves & the assume that's the average in the area (like TV ratings), do they test on their own, do they pick random areas & test or always the same ones, etc.

but you want to know something REALLY cool? (this is great!) In USA, New York, Buffalo, the #2 rated ISP is a DIALUP ISP (not counting schools/corps, which then would show state taxes pay for most of the bandwidth usage in the state)! The cities with the highest usage are all college towns, all state run colleges!

"In USA, New York, Buffalo, the #2 rated ISP is a DIALUP ISP..."

Based on what? It certainly isn't #1 because of speed!

I'm in Louisiana and my connection runs 8.2 up and 550k down on cable. But, then again, the service is only sold as 8meg so I'm right on the money.

There are PLENTY of things that can muck up the works though.

A few days ago I purchased a 400 meg download from www.punchcad.com and when I went to download the file, IE estimated the download would take 115 hours! It should have been around 20 minutes. Their tech support said that there was no problem with their servers. So, I checked the ping rate from my computer to their server and ran a tracert on the connection and I found that a single router hop in Kansas is causing the bottleneck.

I have no way around it, because the first router my ISP has in their hub decides what path to take to the PunchCAD server. My nextdoor neighbor uses AT&T DSL and his connection to PunchCAD was just fine, so I got him to download the file and burn it to a disk for me. According a tracert on his system, the problematic router isn't in his route path.

So all is good, but after three days, the connection to PunchCAD is still hosed from my location.

It just goes to show that the Internet performance from your computer is much more than the raw connection speed.

Jim

"go to Speedtest (linked above) and each post your results here"

Portland OR - Verizon FIOS
Download 26.37 MB/s
Upload 18.71 MB/s

I was speaking recently to a Town Supervisor in another town who told me that each town works out monopolies with cable providers so that only one gets the local contracts for each town. That way competition like Verizon FIOS, etc is eliminated and the cable company that gets the monopoly can provide poor TV reception, leave old cables in place, add new customers without having to upgrade anything.

He's a Town Supervisor in the next town, not this one. I don't think he is misinformed nor lying. None of the towns in this area allowed Verizon FIOS in. I called Verizon and asked them this question. They too said that the towns in my area won't allow them in. I called the FCC and the woman I spoke to said the same thing about local towns and their ability to legally create monopolies for anyone they choose. There is no law against it.

The same thing happened years ago with the local phone company when the internet started to become available. You could only get a Dial Up connection from Highland Telephone. They would not allow a local dial up number for any other ISP except themselves. Eventually they finally allowed AOL to have a local access number , but only if the customer agreed to pay half the normal monthly internet rate to Highland Telephone PLUS the full AOL service rates as well. Highland was a local monopoly phone company even after they were acquired by Frontier Communications (before cell phones became popular) that charged long distance rates to make a call six miles from where I live. It used to cost around $200-$300 a month for normal usage that now costs me $75 a month. Be happy that this is not the case where you live Steve. I wish that were not the case here.

John

Cox Cable in Fairfax Co. VA

30.18 Mbps down
3.78 Mbps up
Ping 10ms

Verizon FIOS is available to me, but have not wanted to go through the hassle of changing.

Interesting that when my daughter spent a summer in Olathe KS two years ago, I could get her DSL (1.5M/786K) as I remember for $13.95 per month US. I'd take that trade versus my $50 per month charge for the faster speed.

RalphM

We have 1.5 meg service. The company keeps calling for us to upgrade to 12 megs with the forever same price. I tell them no, we are old people who do not want or need to change.
JJK

Cox cable in San Diego, CA

14.88 Download.
4.99 Upload.

I could upgrade to Premier with promised speeds of "up to" 30 Mbps but what I've got is plenty fast even with all the video uploads/downloads and the like...

Not even sure who our provider is but here is the result:

Portland, OR

upload = 1.32 Mb/s
download = .71 Mb/s

Comcast Digital Cable in Carmel, NY

Download: 23.48Mbps
Upload: 6.71Mbps

Ping: 13ms to Clifton, NJ ~50mi.



~jr

Semi Rural area near Portland, OR

Verizon DSL and GLAD TO HAVE IT after years of paying through the nose for ISDN which was at least better than dial up. The only other choice where I live is satellite and everyone I know who's tried it says it sucks, barely better than dial up in actual performance.

1.5 Mbit down/0.33 Mbit up. 1.8M/448k is what I pay for.

at&t u-verse here in North Hollywood, CA. 25 down, 1.5 up.