US lags behind world in broadband speeds

According to Net Index, a new website operated by Seattle-based Ookla (the people behind Speedtest.net), the United States is falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to wired broadband speeds. Based on user test info generated over the past 30 days, Net Index ranked the US 26th in the world for downlink speeds with an average downlink speed of 10.16Mbps. Such speeds might not seem all that bad at first glance, but considering that the global average is 7.67Mbps, it’s clear that US ISPs have a lot of ground to make up. South Korea finished first with an average of 34.14Mbps, followed by Latvia, the Republic of Moldova, and Japan at 24.29, 21.37 and 20.39Mbps respectively.
Moving to uplink speeds, South Korea once again led the pack with an average of 18.04Mbps while the US’s 2.21Mbps was barely above the world average of 2.10Mbps. In an attempt to keep things as even as possible, Net Index only counted results from nations in which tests were taken from at least 75,000 unique IP addresses. And though the results are by no means scientific, they will no doubt provide a lot of talking points for those currently engaged in the ongoing battle between advocates of net neutrality and ISPs whose interests are best served by imposing caps on data speeds and usage Results from colleges and businesses were excluded from the results.