Ookla released its U.S. “Speedtest Market Report” this week for the first six months of 2016.
“Fixed broadband customers have seen the biggest jump in performance with download speeds achieving an average of over 50 Mbps for the first time ever,” Ookla reports. “This improvement is more than a 40 percent increase since July 2015.“
The report generally credits the speed boosts to the growth in fiber-optic deployments from everyone from Comcast to AT&T to Google Fiber, but it also mentions other regional internet service providers.
Mobile internet customers have also seen performance gains, improving by more than 30 percent since last year with an average download speed of 19.27 Mbps in the first six months of 2016, according to the report.
Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint are said to be in a tight race for fastest download speeds. All four are also aggressively competing on price to attract new subscribers.
While the numbers are sunny, Ookla points out that the U.S. still is behind from an international perspective, currently ranking 20th in fixed broadband and 42nd in mobile internet performance globally.
More info and charts are available here.
