The portion of OpenSignal’s graph that shows the United States. Full chart below.
Cellular service in the U.S. leaves a lot to be desired. This is due to lax FCC enforcement, with U.S. carriers more focused on improving profits by destroying net neutrality than improving service. In fact, many cell carriers, despite making promises to improve internet speeds for municipalities, have fallen flat on those promises with little to no repercussion. Despite their massive profits, companies like Verizon and AT&T have little incentive to improve due to their near monopoly of the high-end cellular network market.
This lack of regulation and government involvement has a clear impact. According to OpenSignal, the U.S. finds itself in 47th place out of 77 countries. We’re only beating small emerging countries, with nearly all developed countries, many with socialized broadband access through the government, beating us by a wide margin.
Despite these low speeds, cellular service is far more expensive in the U.S. than all but four other countries in the world. The U.S. has fallen behind by a wide margin, and soon we won’t be fit to compete with the rest of the world.
How Slow Are We?
We’re way down the chart.
The United States gets, on average, 18.1Mbps on our 4G networks. Average peak speeds, during the best time of day for internet access, falls at 28.8Mbps download. How bad is that? South Korea averages 47.1Mbps, with a peak speed average of 55.7Mbps. We’re literally less than half the speed of the fastest countries. We’re behind much poorer countries, countries not associated with technological process in the way the United States is… or, rather, was.
If the United States is slower than everyone else, we’ll also innovate slower than everyone else. That’s how a nation becomes irrelevant in tech. It makes our economy vulnerable.
And What Do We Pay?
The U.S. ranks 5th
We’re paying more for this lack of speed than any other country. Countries that pay a small fraction of the cost per gigabyte of data get that data at much higher speeds than anyone in the U.S. This means they’re more widely available to everyone. This makes them a prime target for businesses who may abandon the crippled United States markets for greener pastures.
Are you comfortable knowing you pay more for internet access than all but four countries, yet get speeds slower than 46 countries? I didn’t think so.
The solution is more government regulation, a stronger push for socialized broadband, and incentive to compete by breaking up lobbying powers and monopolies. Unfortunately, all of this will take many years of change. When we make progress, like protecting net neutrality, a Republican president can come in, appoint a Verizon lawyer to head the FCC, and we take a giant step backwards. One step forward, one step back a few years later. Unless we can get sustained progress politically, we’ll remain stalled while other countries fly past us in the fast lane technologically.
Sources:
- Ed Hardy, Cult of Mac
- Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac
- Rewheel