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Verizon FiOS customers don’t have much to complain about in the speed department, unfortunately however, not everyone is so fortunate. According to a recent study conducted by video hosting company Wistia, almost one in five US Internet users are unable to reliably stream HD video over their connections. Even more depressing is the bar Wistia used to make the HD capable determination. Compression technologies allow for a 720p signal to squeeze down a 2 Mbps connection, and that’s something 18% of U.S. Internet users simply can’t do.
As one of the largest video hosting companies around, Wistia is in a unique position to collect and analyze the viewing habits of millions of U.S. customers, and their conclusions are based on several weeks of data. 18% of users being unable to maintain 2 Mbps stream is disheartening, but worse still is that almost 10% are hovering in the sub 1 Mbps range.
Broken down by geography, Illinos, Mississippi, New Mexico and Montana make up the worst offenders, but they certainly aren’t the only ones on the edge. Broadband speed issues are typically either a problem with density, or the lack thereof, and won’t be an easy or inexpensive problem to solve. It does however, need to be solved.
(Image Credit = Wista.com & DigitalTrends.com)
Comments are closed on this article
myh1tlist101
September 11, 2012 at 7:57pm
100 mbps ever since I was a wee child. We were FIOS beta testers.
ApathyCurve
September 11, 2012 at 10:04am
"People that fall into this category could include anyone from consumers that live in rural areas without broadband"
So it's about infrastructure more than company services. Restrict the study to people who have access to broadband, and I'll put money the number of customers who meet the minimum bandwidth criteria is over 98 percent. Put your theories back in your pants, conspiracy nuts.
LatiosXT
September 11, 2012 at 9:09am
I saw some complaints about monopolies and duopolies... while I agree the government should step in, the thing is, you can't have a line for every provider that wants to be out there. A line means a wire, if you had ten ISPs servicing an area, you're going to have route ten company's worth of wires, and some municipals don't want a ton of people having to dig up just to put a line down. And chances are, these companies don't want their wires next to the other guy's (to save space) for liability reasons.
The same reason why energy companies are allowed to service wide areas, and they're the only ones there. Our land would be littered with electrical lines from anyone who wants to provide energy.
Still, it's pretty bad in urban areas, where you think technology should have the most prominence.
Phantom-e
September 10, 2012 at 8:33pm
Never realized just how good I have it! paying about 40/month for 30 Mbps (actual tested about 42Mbps)download speeds of about 4Mbps but if I paid 20 more, I could get 100 Mbps. These are sustained speeds too! This is from Charter btw, and live in Alton IL.
btdog
September 10, 2012 at 7:08pm
A few things:
1. On a global perspective, the US is not going to compete well when compared to smaller countries. The fact is, the US is a pretty large nation with many people living in rural or isolated areas. Of course Japan is going to rank higher than the US - it's about the size of one of our smallest states; it's far easier to build an infrastructure in a country of that size. If you look at the chart, most states with the worst percentages are larger states, sparsely populated, or both.
2. Most people familiar with the cable/ISP industry will tell you the regulations enacted favor the companies that already exist, hence very little competition. The main reason: the cable companies were asked to help write the regulations governing their industry, so they made sure there was a high barrier to entry.
3. The good news is that cell phones (while still more costly than regular ISPs) will hopefully provide excellent competition in the near future. As the speeds increase, the technology matures, and with a base that spans the nation, cell phone companies have the best chance of bringing real change to the ISP sector.
LatiosXT
September 11, 2012 at 9:05am
"Of course Japan is going to rank higher than the US - it's about the size of one of our smallest states; "
Japan has an area of about 145 million square miles, which is just shy of the 4th largest state, Montana (147 million). Otherwise the argument stands.
amill23
September 10, 2012 at 11:04am
I actually get 5Mbps where I live, luckily the town has cable service fairly cheap, I think it's around ~$40 a month. My parents however only, oonly have access to dial-up in their area. Satellite internet is way too expensive and out of the question. On a good day my dad can connect at up to 24.4Kbps, however maximum download speeds are only 3Kb/sec. It sucks supremely.
jaygregz
September 10, 2012 at 10:32am
My brother lives in the sticks. I was desperate to figure out some type of internet solution for him. I ended up finding a local company that shoots out AT&T internet service via a two way point to point antenna. It's really unfortunate that it's AT&T's service but he's thankful at all he can get any type of connection. By the way, his latency is only about 30MS on Average!
Here's the pricing plans that will make you laugh.
BASIC ADVANCED XTREME
Download 1.5Mb 3Mb 10Mb
Rate $29.99 $49.99 $99.99
Lease $6.00 $6.00 $6.00
Total $35.99 $55.99 $105.99
azuza001
September 10, 2012 at 9:38am
Consider me one of the 10-15% in New York that can't watch it. My connection is 1m/450k on DSL and thats the BEST I can get. Even then I always deal with "random disconnects" at all times of the day/night. But I'm the last house on our road that can even get DSL, my parents live less than a mile away and they can't even get that. It's just sad. The only economical way for us to have high speed is through a Cell Provider but then the price per gig is so high I wouldn't do that.
bling581
September 10, 2012 at 9:38am
You can thank the government and the ISP's for the slow speeds. I have to pay $55 a month just for basic 7 mbps broadband so anything faster is more than I can afford. I actually have it pretty decent but it shouldn't cost that much. Many areas are without decent access and those that do face monopolies and duopolies when it comes to broadband. There's a website that is constantly tracking the average internet speeds world wide and the US is usually ranked in the late twenties to even thirties sometimes. Seems to me that a country like the US should be among the top but lack of competition means the ISP companies are slow to move on anything. Why put more into expanding or improving lines when you can continue to milk everyone because nobody else is there to compete?
ddimick
September 10, 2012 at 8:52am
Over 80% of US Internet subscribers have sufficient bandwidth to stream HD video. That's not bad.
goodtime
September 10, 2012 at 8:20am
haha, my family lives out where they can only get around 500kb/s on 3G, while my dorm comes with a connection that's a solid 60mb/s up and down most of the day.
jonnyohio
September 10, 2012 at 4:38am
On Road Runner here in north west Ohio at 50 down/5 up and I can stream 1080p all day long. Timewarner roadrunner service is good here though it will run you $80 a month. I just found out I won't need to wait on the big boys to bring fiber here. Our local wireless/dial up provider that serves all the people out in the boonies around here is going to be offering a FiOS-like connection soon from what I'm hearing. Guess we will see about that...they have a write up about it on their website, no word on pricing, but I can't wait to see that roll out.
Rift2
September 09, 2012 at 11:35pm
This is why Is stay away from digital downloads unless it's a small file I don't have time to download a game that will take 2-3 days or more.
But I noticed with Rift (I quit the same day =) I tried Rift again and it dowloads the maps as you access them in the game. Very good idea I thought I had to download a 6 gig patch first.
I get 156k
devin3627
September 09, 2012 at 10:25pm
i had clearwire and i couldn't even squeeze 240p. instead i used my cell phone and got overcharged for data when i was promised up to 1.5mbp on clearwire.
SkinnyZeroOne
September 10, 2012 at 1:48am
Stay away from that company - I had a chance to work for them & turned it down. Complete nonsense of a company IMO.
I think that they had to cut a deal with Sprint for bucks to survive. I really don't know much more than that except that I got a bad vibe just from checking their websites a couple of years ago when they were starting out.
Seemed to me as of of those sites with no real substance at all - they just ran me around in circles. Also have read (I think here on MPC) that they have bandwidth caps. I can say one thing for sure - I've never read a single good thing about them.
OmNomNom
September 09, 2012 at 9:57pm
CenturyLink - formerly Qwest - DSL, I pay $35 for 20mb down 5mb up for the next 6 months, after that it goes up to $60.
Connection hasn't gone down yet, but there are rare days where my latency is sh!t...Coax lines are always having issues here one way or another though.
computertechie
September 10, 2012 at 9:02am
Similar here, coincidentally in MT. About $40/month for 1.5mb down. Don't have an option to upgrade even to 7mb, because of the section of town I'm in, I guess. Cable service is out of the question expensive, because I would have to at least bundle in TV with their internet.
jonnyohio
September 10, 2012 at 4:43am
I left centurylink because they couldn't offer speeds this high in my area...guess I might have to look into them again....I never had an outage when I had them, but I've had a few on roadrunner though not for very long.
cwils02
September 09, 2012 at 7:37pm
Thankfully, I live in Chattanooga, TN. We are having a bandwidth war here. I have 50MBs. I can actually get 1GBs for only :-) about $300/mo.
We have Comcast (Which averaged 1.5 days a month being down & it only took about 2 hours of trouble shooting to find out that there was a general Comcast internet outage in the area), AT&T Uverse, and EPB Fiber(Hasn't been down in over a year unless there was a major power outage in my particular area).
Please don't hate me.
vrmlbasic
September 09, 2012 at 10:41pm
If you have Comcast and AT&T Uverse as 2 of your 3 possible ISPs then I know that I don't hate you, I feel sorry for you.
TheRyGuy
September 09, 2012 at 7:17pm
Somehow Alaska and Hawaii are just foreign countries. I live in Anchorage, Alaska. My ISP is GCI, and I've got a 22 Mbps connection. Outside of Anchorage the speeds are less than 1 Mbps, and some regions don't have broadband, just dial-up. I just wish Alaska and Hawaii were used in statistics as well, there are 720k+ peeps here.
andrewc513
September 09, 2012 at 6:59pm
Technically I can, but it would cost an arm and a leg. Surprisingly, I live in one of the worst state on that chart, Mississippi. I have LTE in my area with Verizon, my bandwidth tops 30+ Mbit on a good day, but unfortunately I'm not on grandfathered unlimited data. My home connection is a mere 7 Mbit over cable.
TheRyGuy
September 09, 2012 at 6:50pm
Somehow Alaska and Hawaii are just foreign countries. I live in Anchorage, Alaska. My ISP is GCI, and I've got a 22 Mbps connection. Outside of Anchorage the speeds are less than 1 Mbps, and some regions don't have broadband, just dial-up. I just wish Alaska and Hawaii were used in statistics as well, there are 720k+ peeps here.
vrmlbasic
September 09, 2012 at 10:42pm
Out of the ~310 million people total in the USA (not counting illegals).
Strangelove_424
September 09, 2012 at 6:07pm
Alot of gamers I meet in the south seem to have massive connection speed problems. One guy had to drop out of our sim racing league because of it. Sucks.
Orange7
September 09, 2012 at 5:22pm
I think that that map disagrees completely with your comment about NY, MY, and MA. You may want to check into that.
SAND_CREATURE
September 09, 2012 at 5:19pm
"Broken down by geography, the U.S. Northeast seems to be the worst off. New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maryland make up the worst offenders"
Just an fyi, that chart was interpreted completely wrong... Those states in green are the best, not the worst; green means lowest percentage of those who can't stream...
loozer
September 09, 2012 at 3:55pm
Time warner has the monopoly in my area. It's not as bad as comcast/ATT, but the speeds still suck and the prices are through the roof. My phone's 4G LTE is about 3 times as fast.
Jeffredo
September 09, 2012 at 3:29pm
This two headed monopoly by AT&T and Comcast needs to end. DSL is too expensive in this country and far too slow on average. The best I can get from AT&T is 3 Mbps for about 40 bucks a month and I refuse to give Comcast money. I live in a town of 20,000, so I'm not out in the sticks. There should be better/faster options.
T3RR0RH4WK
September 09, 2012 at 3:37pm
My girlfriend and I just moved out -- granted only a town over from where we used to live -- and we live in Florida, so we also have to put up with AT&T and Comcast's shitty internet monopoly. FIOS isn't in our area, Google's internet stuff isn't out yet, and there are no other providers in the area. We're fucked. I had to go with Comcast (price-to-speed ratio and all), but I use everything known to man to keep Comcast out of my tubes even though they're my ISP. I try, anyway. I couldn't possibly hate this crap any more than I do right now lol.
