The Fastest ISPs In the U.S.
Who offers the quickest service in your area?
Is your Web browsing as fast as it could be? Believe it or not, the number-one factor inpage-load speed (or any kind of download) isn’t your browser. It’s your Internet service provider (ISP). After all, a Web page can’t finish loading until all the bits arrive. And while cable and phone companies compete to provide fast connections, 80 percent of Americans have no idea how fast their connection is supposed to be, according to arecent FCC study.
The reality is that consumers do not expe-rience speeds anywhere near what their ISPsclaim to offer, at least not when it comes to Web surfing. An ISP’s claimed throughput rates are for sustained downloads of an individual file, when Web pages are typically made up of several files: the HTML code, graphics, Flash elements, and so forth. For each file, there’s latency, as well as all the vagaries of the Internet as data from a Website hops from router to router down to your computer. This is why, when ISPs advertise download speeds, they’re referring only to downloads directly from their servers.
So to answer the question, Is your Web browsing as fast as it could be?” PCMagcreated SurfSpeed, a free Web-surfingspeedometer. SurfSpeed lets you compare your results to those of other people in your ZIP code, state, and country. It even lets you drill down by time period, ISP, and connection type. To help create a more complete picture, we also include the ISP Speed Satisfaction rating from our 2009 Reader Satisfaction survey. Also, it is important to note that these numbers are from PCMag readers, not the entire Web-surfing population.
This story is a guide to help you pick an ISP, but the results are not an absolute rating of the speeds you’ll get from the ISPs in your area. This assumes that you even have a choice when it comes to picking broadband—many don’t.
The Fastest ISP Nationwide
When it comes down to what type of broadband connection is fastest, the perception is that fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) services, exemplified by Verizon FiOS, set the gold standard, and that if you can’t get FTTP, go with cable and lastly DSL. Only select satellite if you have no other alternatives. Perception and reality are mostly in sync here,though the differences may not be as great as you think. Verizon FiOS did, in fact, take the top spot in the country, with a SurfSpeed score of 1.22 Mbps. And consumers are, by far, the most satisfied with FiOS’ speed, giving it a 9.0 average rating on a scale of 1 to10 in last year’s Reader Survey. However, the second and third spots were taken by twocable providers, Cox and Optimum Online,which scored SurfSpeeds of 1.14 and 1.12Mbps, respectively. Both of these results are less than 10 percent slower than FiOS and are unlikely to be perceptible to any user.
DSL brings up the rear. Earthlink was the fastest, at 882 Kilobits per second (Kbps),edging out one cable provider, Char-ter. But none of the other DSL providers approached either of these ISPs speeds,ranging from AT&T’s SurfSpeed of 722 Kbps down to FrontierNet’s 544 Kbps. Not surprisingly, DSL providers also had the lowest speed satisfaction ratings.
The Fastest ISPs by Region
Where you live in the country can have a significant impact on your broadband speeds, even if you have the same ISP as some one in the big city. Verizon has both the fastest and slowest broadband SurfSpeed resultsin the Northeast. Its FiOS fiber service leads the way at 1.19 Mbps while Verizon’s DSL is at the bottom with 608 Kbps. Verizon FiOSis also the fastest gun in the West, achieving the fastest speed of any region that the ISP serves:1.70 M bps. Cox Cable, which serves California, Nevada, and Idaho in the West, is the second fastest ISP at 1.39 Mbps.
The Midwest has the cheapest broad-band, but things move slower in the Mid-west, too. The fastest ISP in the region was Road Runner at 866 Kbps. Interestingly, though, Qwest DSL was only slightly behind at 848 Kbps, beating out cable providers Charter and Comcast. AT&T’s DSL was the slowest broadband service at just 594 Kbps.
Five of the six states in the country with the lowest broadband usage are in the South, with less than a third of eligible Mississippians using broadband (32 percent). Also, fiber loses its edge in the South. BothCox (1.12 Mbps) and Comcast (1.08 Mbps) were faster than Verizon’s FiOS (1.05 Mbps). Road Runner was only slightly behind at 1.0 Mbps. AT&T provides the fastest DSL service in the region (780 Kbps) whereas Qwest (614 Kbps) was the slowest.
Methodology
The results of this story are based on nearly a quarter million tests run between May1, 2009, and April 30, 2010, by more than 6,000 SurfSpeed users. SurfSpeed grabs pages (and page elements) from multiple sites, with varying amounts of bandwidth. In addition, just like a real browser, SurfSpeed initiates multiple connections to get all of the page elements. Each connection takes time, and that becomes a part of the SurfSpeed equation. By default, the utility runs once per hour, “browsing” to top sites. You can also run SurfSpeed on the sites of your choice, but we considered results only from these presets. In order to be included in our analysis, an ISP had to have test results from at least 50 separate users.
Who offers the quickest service in your area?
Is your Web browsing as fast as it could be? Believe it or not, the number-one factor inpage-load speed (or any kind of download) isn’t your browser. It’s your Internet service provider (ISP). After all, a Web page can’t finish loading until all the bits arrive. And while cable and phone companies compete to provide fast connections, 80 percent of Americans have no idea how fast their connection is supposed to be, according to arecent FCC study.
The reality is that consumers do not expe-rience speeds anywhere near what their ISPsclaim to offer, at least not when it comes to Web surfing. An ISP’s claimed throughput rates are for sustained downloads of an individual file, when Web pages are typically made up of several files: the HTML code, graphics, Flash elements, and so forth. For each file, there’s latency, as well as all the vagaries of the Internet as data from a Website hops from router to router down to your computer. This is why, when ISPs advertise download speeds, they’re referring only to downloads directly from their servers.
So to answer the question, Is your Web browsing as fast as it could be?” PCMagcreated SurfSpeed, a free Web-surfingspeedometer. SurfSpeed lets you compare your results to those of other people in your ZIP code, state, and country. It even lets you drill down by time period, ISP, and connection type. To help create a more complete picture, we also include the ISP Speed Satisfaction rating from our 2009 Reader Satisfaction survey. Also, it is important to note that these numbers are from PCMag readers, not the entire Web-surfing population.
This story is a guide to help you pick an ISP, but the results are not an absolute rating of the speeds you’ll get from the ISPs in your area. This assumes that you even have a choice when it comes to picking broadband—many don’t.
The Fastest ISP Nationwide
When it comes down to what type of broadband connection is fastest, the perception is that fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) services, exemplified by Verizon FiOS, set the gold standard, and that if you can’t get FTTP, go with cable and lastly DSL. Only select satellite if you have no other alternatives. Perception and reality are mostly in sync here,though the differences may not be as great as you think. Verizon FiOS did, in fact, take the top spot in the country, with a SurfSpeed score of 1.22 Mbps. And consumers are, by far, the most satisfied with FiOS’ speed, giving it a 9.0 average rating on a scale of 1 to10 in last year’s Reader Survey. However, the second and third spots were taken by twocable providers, Cox and Optimum Online,which scored SurfSpeeds of 1.14 and 1.12Mbps, respectively. Both of these results are less than 10 percent slower than FiOS and are unlikely to be perceptible to any user.
DSL brings up the rear. Earthlink was the fastest, at 882 Kilobits per second (Kbps),edging out one cable provider, Char-ter. But none of the other DSL providers approached either of these ISPs speeds,ranging from AT&T’s SurfSpeed of 722 Kbps down to FrontierNet’s 544 Kbps. Not surprisingly, DSL providers also had the lowest speed satisfaction ratings.
The Fastest ISPs by Region
Where you live in the country can have a significant impact on your broadband speeds, even if you have the same ISP as some one in the big city. Verizon has both the fastest and slowest broadband SurfSpeed resultsin the Northeast. Its FiOS fiber service leads the way at 1.19 Mbps while Verizon’s DSL is at the bottom with 608 Kbps. Verizon FiOSis also the fastest gun in the West, achieving the fastest speed of any region that the ISP serves:1.70 M bps. Cox Cable, which serves California, Nevada, and Idaho in the West, is the second fastest ISP at 1.39 Mbps.
The Midwest has the cheapest broad-band, but things move slower in the Mid-west, too. The fastest ISP in the region was Road Runner at 866 Kbps. Interestingly, though, Qwest DSL was only slightly behind at 848 Kbps, beating out cable providers Charter and Comcast. AT&T’s DSL was the slowest broadband service at just 594 Kbps.
Five of the six states in the country with the lowest broadband usage are in the South, with less than a third of eligible Mississippians using broadband (32 percent). Also, fiber loses its edge in the South. BothCox (1.12 Mbps) and Comcast (1.08 Mbps) were faster than Verizon’s FiOS (1.05 Mbps). Road Runner was only slightly behind at 1.0 Mbps. AT&T provides the fastest DSL service in the region (780 Kbps) whereas Qwest (614 Kbps) was the slowest.
Methodology
The results of this story are based on nearly a quarter million tests run between May1, 2009, and April 30, 2010, by more than 6,000 SurfSpeed users. SurfSpeed grabs pages (and page elements) from multiple sites, with varying amounts of bandwidth. In addition, just like a real browser, SurfSpeed initiates multiple connections to get all of the page elements. Each connection takes time, and that becomes a part of the SurfSpeed equation. By default, the utility runs once per hour, “browsing” to top sites. You can also run SurfSpeed on the sites of your choice, but we considered results only from these presets. In order to be included in our analysis, an ISP had to have test results from at least 50 separate users.
