Man, we sure love rankings. Fat. Sweat. Carbon emissions. High schools. Colleges. Parties. And, of course, download speeds.
From the Communications Workers of America comes the revelation that Texas ranks 37 in terms of megabits per second.
The first-ever state-by-state report on Internet connection speed released today ranks the nation’s speediest and slowest states in median download speeds. Rhode Island tops the ranking at 5.011 megabits per second (mbps) while Alaska ranks dead last at 0.545 mbps. The same 10 megabyte (MB) file that takes 15 seconds to download in Rhode Island would take nearly two and a half minutes to download in Alaska. Texas, with a median download speed of 1.509 mbps, ranks thirty-seventh.
The report, based on aggregated data from nearly 80,000 users, also shows that the U.S. is falling far behind other major industrialized nations, with median real-time download speed in the U.S. at a mere 1.9 mbps.
[…]
“The United States is the only industrialized nation without a national policy to promote universal, high-speed Internet access,” said Larry Cohen, president, Communications Workers of America. “The grim results of the CWA Speed Test—even for the highest ranked states—illustrate that, without a national policy, we risk losing our competitive edge in today’s global economy—and the jobs that go with it.”
Something must be done about this. We wouldn’t want America to fall behind in the global race to process crucial information. – Keith Plocek
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2007.
