Internet Speed Tripled in Three Years; Thanks Video

  • People love them some movies. So they need them some bandwidth

People love them some movies. So they need them some bandwidth

Is that enough speed for ya?

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reported last month that average internet download connection speeds in the U.S. have jumped in recent years, reaching almost 31 megabits per second (Mbps) in September 2014, a rise of 300% from the average 10 Mbps in March 2011.

Consumer use of streaming video, downloading of content and use of online video games have all exploded, creating increased demand for bandwidth as providers try to keep up. Still, speeds in the U.S. continue to lag behind many countries, including Canada, France, Germany and Japan. As of 2013, according to the FCC, the United States ranked 25 out of 39 nations in bandwidth. The country with the world’s fastest download speeds that year was Luxembourg, with average speeds of 47.32 Mbps.

People love them some movies

The FCC also said that consumption of video drives more than 60 percent of America’s Internet traffic, and continues to rise (much of this video coming from hard-drive-based servers, storing 100TB of data each, and streaming between 10,000 and 20,000 movies simultaneously, says Computerworld).

The FCC’s current standard benchmark for broadband speeds is now 25 Mbps for downloads (compared with 4 Mbps five years ago).

Infrastructure required — did you get your upgrade?

“Faster, better broadband will unleash new innovations and new services to improve the lives of the American people,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, in a statement, and according to the report, the FCC holds Internet providers “accountable” to achieve improvements.

The FCC noted that today’s download speeds are much more likely to achieve advertised speeds than they had been in 2011, based on data the commission collects from monitoring boxes deployed voluntarily by consumers in over 5,000 U.S. homes.

2016-01-14T02:33:09+00:00

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