SnailBy Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

I suppose I should be happy with what I have, but still. Generally I get 5Mbps and sometimes up to 12Mbps from Comcast. But compared to average speeds of 61Mbps from Japan and 7.6Mbps from Canada … it’s really annoying.

The organization conducted its own download/upload speed tests online, which were taken by roughly 67,000 people across the country, and concluded that the average download speed in the US was 1.9Mbps. According to CWA president Larry Cohen, “the results are deeply troubling.”

The data, says the CWA, is in in stark contrast to broadband speeds available in other countries. The organization compared its own survey data to numbers provided by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s “Assessing Broadband in America” (PDF) report, which showed that countries such as Japan and even our closest neighbor of Canada have significantly higher broadband download speeds—61Mbps and 7.6Mbps, respectively. Source: Ars Technica

We Say: Well, of course, if you ask someone else you get different numbers. The ITIF report, which gives the Canadian and Japanese numbers, says the US average is 4.8Mbps. That doesn’t really make me less annoyed, when I notice that besides Japan at 61 there’s Korea at 45.6Mbps (now we know why they love MMORPGs). :-)