Ookla’s 2017 U.S. Market Report for fixed broadband performance is in and while internet speeds are becoming increasingly faster across the country, some providers are faring better than others.
Comcast’s Xfinity internet is the fastest ISP in the United States, achieving a speed score of 69.58 for the first half of 2017, according to the report. Ookla’s speed score is a comprehensive metric that incorporates low-end, median, and top-end performance for both download and upload speeds, with 90 percent of the final speed score attributed to download speed, and the remaining 10 percent to upload speed.
Verizon Fios came in second with a speed score of 66.74, followed closely by Cox in third with a score of 64.85. Charter’s Spectrum came in fourth with a 51.45 speed score, and AT&T was fifth coming in with a score of 49.59. Significantly lower was Frontier at 31.7 for sixth place, and bringing in the rear was CenturyLink, which only received a speed score of 14.91.
Acceptable speed ratio
Most customers need download speeds of at least 10 Mbps for common internet use, so Ookla measured what percentage of tests taken on each provider’s network reached at least that speed.
Once again Xfinity took the top spot, with an acceptable speed ratio of 91.6 percent. Spectrum and Cox were right behind with ratios of 90.2 percent and 89.4 percent, respectively. Verizon Fios came in fourth at 84.6 percent, ahead of AT&T with a ratio of 75.4 percent. Frontier followed at 63.6 percent, but CenturyLink again trailed behind, struggling with just half of samples (51.8 percent) on their network meeting the acceptable speed threshold.
Fastest ISP by region and city
When broken down into regions it’s clear different parts of the country are getting vastly different broadband speeds, while a city-by-city breakdown shows more diversity than mobile.
Xfinity still shines and is the fastest provider in the West, with a speed score of 78.6, and the Northeast, with a 77.4 score. Altice’s Suddenlink took the spot as fastest provider in the South with a score of 73.83, and Medicom won for the Midwest at 56.63.
The report also shows that the Northeast and Midwest lag far behind in broadband speeds, with scores of 34.14 and 40.83, respectively. Though smaller providers, like Webpass in the Northeast, and CTI Fiber in the Midwest offer faster speeds to small portions of these regions, their footprint isn’t big enough to increase the regions’ overall speed scores. The West and South, meanwhile, have scores of 58.34 and 57.41, respectively.
Looking at the 100 largest cities in the U.S., Spectrum was on top in 24 cities, followed by Cox in 19, and Xfinity in 18. AT&T was the fastest ISP in 10 cities, followed by Google Fiber in five. Verizon Fios was only the fastest in four cities, followed by RCN in three, and Suddenlink and Webpass with two each.
Though Google Fiber only had five, it was the top provider for Kansas City, Mo., which out of the 100 cities tested, had the fastest average download speed of 131.39 Mbps and fastest average upload speed by far of 117.44 Mbps. The remaining top five cities with the fastest average download speeds were Austin, San Francisco, Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta.
Laredo, Texas had the slowest average download speed at just 26.89 Mbps, and slowest upload speeds of 4.5 Mbps.
Global standing and future outlook
Overall broadband speeds are increasing thanks in part to investments and infrastructure upgrades needed to roll out DOCSIS 3.1 and higher tiered packages becoming more affordable, the firm indicates.
Verizon Fios specifically saw a substantial spike in download and upload speeds in April, correlating with their introduction of 1 Gbps service at a $69 price point, Ookla says. Speeds have also increased as cable operators like Comcast offer more multi-gigabit Fiber-to-the-Premises (FTTP) packages, according to the report.
Compared to other countries around the world however, the U.S. isn’t leading the pack. Ookla’s Speedtest data, based on over 111 million consumer-initiated tests from more than 26 million unique users, shows the U.S.’s average download speed over fixed broadband for the first half of 2017 was 64.17 Mbps. That number means the U.S. ranks 15th in the world for download speeds, behind the Netherlands and ahead of Spain. Average upload speed was 22.79 MBPS, putting the U.S. in 24th place globally.
Ookla expects fixed internet download speeds will continue to increase with the proliferation of DOCSIS 3.1, and as cable providers upgrade larger portions of their footprint over the next year, making 500 Mbps and 1 Gbps packages more widely available.
“It will also be interesting to see how many cable providers follow Altice’s lead and migrate at least some portion of the footprint from DOCSIS to FTTP in order to address the capacity demand and start delivering multi-gigabit service to subscribers,” the authors write.
Altice USA has said it’s on track to deploy fiber to reach 1 million newly constructed homes by the end of 2018.
