The Fastest ISPs in America, and Where You Live

Submitted by tim on Mon, 12/01/2008 - 15:00

The Fastest ISPs in Americaand Where You Live
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The Fastest ISPs in Americaand Where You Live
ARTICLE DATE:
12.02.08
By
Jeremy A. Kaplan

pc_magazine512:http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2335749,00.asp

When comparing the nation's ISPs, there are few metrics of particular importance for the average consumer. How to determine which one is fastest, or which has the most satisfied customers? Sure, price plays a big role, but beyond that, what does one look for beyond sheer advertising dollars to ascertain which ISP is the best?
Look no further than this analysis of results from PCMag's SurfSpeed app, a utility that grabs pages (and page elements) from several popular Web sites to measure your actual Internet surfing speednot the bandwidth allocation your ISP quotes you. In the past few weeks, we've pored over data points collected from more than 17,000 profiles (that is, unique IP addresses)comprising over 200,000 individual teststo find out which are the fastest ISPs in America. Using this data, we've also taken a long, hard look at each state in the country, because fast overall service doesn't translate into fast local service. One provider may have tremendous averages nationwide yet give short shrift to your corner of the country. In this story, we first discuss the United States as a whole; then we walk through a state-by-state analysis to see just how each of the Union's fifty square up.
In addition, SurfSpeed polls users on satisfaction with their ISPs, and we analyze the answers side by side with the speed data. It's interesting to consider satisfaction alongside speed, but note that in only three states were more than 50 percent of users satisfied. The relative positions of ISPs coincide for the most part with the information from our annual Reader Satisfaction Survey, especially among cable service providers. But the satisfaction numbers from SurfSpeed point to a global truth: Faster is always better.
And the Nation's Fastest ISP Is...
In the modern world of Internet service, two things go without saying: Fiber optic service is dramatically faster, and satellite service is substantially slower. Our results support these shocking statements. Among satellite services, including industry leader HughesNet and competitors like WildBlue, SurfSpeeds averaged just 145 kilobits per second (Kbps). Taken as a whole, DSL and cable connections were more than five times as fast. And fiber optic connections, including the well-publicized Verizon FiOS and lesser-known regional carriers like Utah's Mstar and New Mexico's CityLink Fiber, were 152 percent faster than that. Clearly, if you can switch up, you should. The fiber market will only grow, too, as companies install more and more lines. According to the Telecommunications Industry Association's 2008 Market Review and Forecast, "During the next four years, more fiber will be deployed than during the so-called overbuilding years of the late 1990s and early 2000s."
The battle between cable and DSL (digital subscriber line) companies seems to have ended, and cable has been declared the victor. According to our results, the average cable service provider gets you online at 688 Kbps, while the average DSL lets you surf at just 469 Kbpscable connections, on average, are 47 percent faster. But which of them should you sign up for? Optimum Online from Cablevision tops the list, with an average nationwide SurfSpeed of 839 Kbps. But don't turn to the nation's largest cable service provider just for fast speeds; sign up for the service because 61 percent of users declared themselves either "Very" or "Extremely" satisfied. Cox Communications is the nation's third-largest cable provider, but it comes in second on our tests, with an average speed of 774 Kbps and nearly half of users claiming satisfaction with the service.
In fact, almost half of cable users were pleased with their ISPs' service, and those cable services that weren't high on the list still had users plumping for the middle choice"Satisfied" rather than "Somewhat Satisfied" or "Not Satisfied." Take Charter Communications, for example. Charter calls itself "the third-largest publicly traded cable operator in the U.S." (note the "publicly traded" part) and claims to "serve approximately 5.6 million customers in 28 states." On our study, only 29 percent of users were "Very satisfied" or "Extremely Satisfied" with the service, but another 47 percent were just "Satisfied," and only 24 percent rated their experience lower than that. In other words, even when cable's bad, it's good. The DSL market looks decidedly different. While digital subscriber lines and cable lines were for a time synonymous in people's minds, both describing the wonderful world of "broadband," cable has clearly taken off in terms of sheer speed. FrontierNet is the fastest DSL provider in the nation, averaging real-world SufSpeeds of 724 Kbps. The rural and suburban ISP leaves only 20 percent of its customers really excited about their Internet access, and another 50 percent think it's good enough. FrontierNet is the exception. Even the slowest cable service provider was faster than the other DSL providers: Compare CenturyTel's 520 Kbps with Alltell's measly 357. And the average satisfaction numbers of DSL users speak for itself: Just 27 percent reported themselves satisfied.
The Fastest ISP Where You Live
Analyzing gigantic areas such as states and regions offers some insight, but it's a challenge. Aggregate on too large a level and your results vanish. For example, states in the West get online faster than anywhere else in the country, at 565 Kbps, and the South proved the slowest part of the country at 551 Kbps. But at just 14 Kbps, the difference between those numbers isn't very meaningful.
Looking at the state level proves more interesting. Clearly, metropolitan areas are better cared for by Internet service providers, as a rule. More densely populated areas across the country reported better and faster service on our test. So we could have studied, say, the speed of access in St. Paul versus that in Albuquerque. But think of the overall speed of a state as a balance between how quickly cities get online and how effectively more rural areas are served. If half a state's residents can't even get broadband access, how well served is the state as a whole? After all, people in suburbs and more rural towns want to get online too, and they prefer faster Internet speeds, just like city folk.
Speed is only half the picture. Availability of broadband services is a gigantic factor in how fast you get online, and the cost of that service also determines what percentage of area residents can afford it. If it's too expensive and available in only half the state, the state's overall speed rating will drop. To get the full picture of Internet access across the country, we turned to Centris, a research firm that collects information on the use of voice, video, data, and electronic products and services. According to Centris, New Jersey has the highest percentage of broadband penetration, with a whopping 80.2 percent, and speedy Nevada comes in second with 75.3 percent. In fact, broadband penetration was over 50 percent in more than half the country. But cost tells a different story: Folks from New Jersey pay a very low $33 on average for broadband access, but Nevadans pay nearly $40. Is it increased options? Or a regional thing? According to David Klein, executive vice president at Centris, "These findings are consistent with our view that competition and market dynamics are driven by the ability to deploy the fastest technologies at the local level. We will likely see even higher penetration rates and more market-share changes as service providers locally deploy new faster technologies such as DOCSIS 3.0 and universal wireless broadband."
A few notes about the results before we begin: The SurfSpeed application was designed to measure the real-world speed of your browserthe speed at which you surf the Internetnot the absolute speed of your Internet connection. Most line tests measure speed by sending you large files, and seeing how long it takes you to download them. ISPs cite numbers based on abstract mathematicsthe number of users divided by the theoretical line speed. Instead, the SurfSpeed application measures the time it takes your computer to visit several popular Web sites, giving you a real-world measure of your connection speed. As such, that result will differ, in some cases dramatically, from the number quoted by your ISP.
Additionally, this information comes from readers of PCMag, not the population as a whole. We may not have as much information on a particular ISP in a particular region, but have tried to provide useful information anyway. In other words, this information should serve you as a guideline when you're selecting an ISP but is by no means an absolute rating of speed. With that in mind, we present you with this comprehensive, state-by-state analysis of the U.S.A. How does your state rank?
Methodology
When you download large files, high bandwidth generally translates into faster file-download speeds. But remember, a download also relies on the site that's serving the file to you. If it has a small pipe (limited bandwidth) or it's overloaded with users, you're unlikely to see the speed that your provider touts. With that in mind, Bruno Sonnino, the author of many PCMag.com utilities, developed SurfSpeed for us as a test of real surfing speed. It's a free download (registration required) from go.pcmag.com/utilities.
Bandwidth testing sites download a single large file, initiating a single connection. 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.
This behavior gives a unique measurement that more accurately reflects how you spend 90 percent of your time on the Web: surfing or waiting for a page to load. By default, the utility runs once per hour, "browsing" to top sites like AOL, eBay, Google, MySpace, Yahoo, and more. You can run it on the sites of your choice, but we considered results only from these presets.
Once you run SurfSpeed, you can begin comparing your results with those of others. Each time you run a test, the results are sent to PC Magazine's servers. This data is then used to compare your speed with that of others in your ZIP code, state, country, and the world. You can also see how your ISP compares both with other ISPs and with itself from state to state.
For this story, we considered all the tests run from May 23, 2008, to October 15, 2008; that's almost five months of testing. In all, the SurfSpeed 2.0 application had data from 17,333 users, and from those users we sampled 215,575 tests. Because each test hits ten Web sites, we had over two million data points to consider.
No matter how fast your connection, occasionally sites won't be available, pages won't load properly, or downloads will take an inordinately long time to arrive. For that reason our research department helped us to identify "outliers" and clean the data so we could proceed with our analysis. When analyzing within a state, we considered only those ISPs and connection types for which we had at least five users.
Our satisfaction ratings are based on user-reported information in the SurfSpeed application, which includes a five-item satisfaction index. We aggregated people who rated themselves as "Extremely Satisfied" or "Very Satisfied" under the category of "satisfied" users. Dissatisfied users include those who rated themselves as either "Somewhat Satisfied" or "Not Satisfied."
To complement our data, we took population figures from the U.S. government's 2007 census estimates (the most recent data available) and land area in square miles, numbers we took from Wikipedia. To determine the penetration of broadband connections into households, and the average cost of those connections, we turned to Centristhe only national database that continuously collects household information on the use of voice, video, data, and electronic products and services.

Download the charts:
Speed by ISPs (PDF)
Time of Day (PDF)
Satisfaction by State (PDF)
Speed By State (PDF)
Speed by Connection Type (PDF)
Satisfaction by ISP (PDF)
The Northeast
ARTICLE DATE:
12.02.08
Over 17,000 users across the country ran our SurfSpeed application for a total of nearly a quarter of a million times, helping us to determine the speed of Web browsing in each of the 50 states. Roll your mouse over the Flash map below to see each state's SurfSpeed rank, based on the average speed of area Internet connectionsa higher rank means faster surfing. Then scroll down the page to read our analysis of each state, to learn why it placed where it did and which regional ISPs were the fastest.

Connecticut
Population: 3,502,309
Area: 5,543 square miles
Web site: www.ct.gov
Average speed: 716 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 5th
Satisfied users: 41 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $36
Broadband penetration: 73.7 percent
The 5th-fastest state in the union is also one of the most densely populatedand amply served by ISPs. Cable companies clearly dominate among users, and Cox rises to the top within them, with speeds averaging 864 Kbpsover 200 Kbps faster than Comcast's regional service. Residents weren't yelling from the rooftops about their service, but they were stoic enough; a mere 17 percent reported being dissatisfied.
Delaware
Population: 864,764
Area: 2,490 square miles
Web site: www.delaware.gov
Average speed: 647 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 15th
Satisfied users: 20 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $35
Broadband penetration: 63.3 percent
Delaware may be the second-smallest of the United States, but it's no speed slouch. The Diamond State came in 15th among PCMag readers, probably owing to the large number of Verizon FiOS users. The fiber-optic service averaged a speedy 940 Kbps in Delaware, but a mere 20 percent of residents reported satisfaction with their ISPs, and a whopping 53 percent were unhappy. Why so gloomy?
Maine
Population: 1,317,207
Area: 33,414 square miles
Web site: www.maine.gov
Average speed: 427 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 40th
Satisfied users: 62 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $30
Broadband penetration: 60.1 percent
Maine's in a tough spot on our survey, though you wouldn't know it by asking users. Maine users reported the highest levels of satisfaction with their ISPsan impressive 62 percent of them claiming to be extremely or very satisfied. Yet the state placed 40th in terms of speed, with an average of just 427 Kbps. Maybe users are too busy enjoying the beautiful coastline and numerous national parks to care about their slow service?
Maryland
Population: 5,618,344
Area: 12,407 square miles
Web site: www.maryland.gov
Average speed: 691 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 10th
Satisfied users: 49 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $39
Broadband penetration: 68.9 percent
Fast Internet access, satisfied customers, and great crab cakes: What more could you ask for? Maryland residents reported the fastest access from Verizon FiOS (of course), but a range of other decent local providers make for a cornucopia of service offerings. So why are people using HughesNet's slow satellite service? With an average of 192 Kbps, those slow connections dragged down the state's overall speed in our survey.
Massachusetts
Population: 6,449,755
Area: 10,555 square miles
Web site: www.mass.gov
Average speed: 695 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 9th
Satisfied users: 43 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $35
Broadband penetration: 67.1 percent
As the 9th-fastest state in America, Massachusetts surfs along at a peppy 695 Kbps. Who led the pack? Cable service provider Comcast somehow delivers faster average speeds than Verizon's FiOSat least according to SurfSpeed users in the Bay State. And Comcast averaged 872 Kbps, much faster than Verizon's slow regional DSL service, which managed just 351 Kbps. Superfast surfing speeds and a Celtics championshipsounds like a plan!
New Hampshire
Population: 1,315,828
Area: 9,350 square miles
Web site: www.nh.gov
Average speed: 615 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 17th
Satisfied users: 24 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $49
Broadband penetration: 65.1 percent
New Hampshire came in 17th on our speed tests, with an average of 615 Kbps, for the most part thanks to Comcast's respectable regional service. To the handful of Granite State users reporting an average of 483 Kbps with Verizon's DSL service, we suggest rising up against your oppressors: Pick up the phone and call Comcast instead. Live free or die!
New Jersey
Population: 8,685,920
Area: 8,729 square miles
Web site: www.nj.gov
Average speed: 727 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 4th
Satisfied users: 45 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $33
Broadband penetration: 80.2 percent
Proximity to New York City probably gives little New Jersey a big boost in terms of Internet access: ISPs clamoring to service the millions living across the Hudson run their trunk lines straight through the Garden State, which just happens to be the most densely populated of America's 50 states. If you live here, you'll do well with Verizon's 969-Kbps fiber-optic service. But don't hesitate to sign up for Optimum Online, either: Cablevision's 887 Kbps cable lines deliver piping-hot Internet access that has consistently earned our reader's approval.
New York
Population: 19,297,729
Area: 54,555 square miles
Web site: www.ny.gov
Average speed: 714 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 6th
Satisfied users: 47 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $36
Broadband penetration: 72.9 percent
New York State boasts the largest city in the country, the 6th-fastest Internet accessand the nicest cabbies around, contrary to their reputation. New Yorkers are among the most satisfied, too, with 47 percent of users claiming to be extremely or very satisfied with their ISP. A lot of them are using Comcast, which blew by all other regional ISPs in our survey, averaging 1,050 Kbps; short of FiOS service in Washington and California, it's the fastest in the nation. Regional powerhouse Time Warner averaged just 734 Kbps. FrontierNet raced ahead in New York as well: Its 792-Kbps service was the fastest regional DSL in the nation.
Pennsylvania
Population: 12,432,792
Area: 46,055 square miles
Web site: www.pa.gov
Average speed: 746.8 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 3rd
Satisfied users: 35 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $33
Broadband penetration: 52.5 percent
Look out, Northeast! Pennsylvania boasts the highest speeds in the regionindeed, the third-fastest in the nation, at a collective average of 747 Kbps. The Quaker State also has some of the least satisfied users, ranking 9th on that stat, with 31 percent. The state seems dragged down by DSL connections, including Verizon's piddling 438-Kbps service. Good citizens, switch over to the 1-Mbps FiOS service!
Rhode Island
Population: 1,057,832
Area: 1,545 square miles
Web site: www.ri.gov
Average speed: 516 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 33rd
Satisfied users: 57 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $35
Broadband penetration: 74.4 percent
The smallest state in the union is also the second-most-densely populated, according to the most recent census estimates. Dense areas usually mean better Internet access, yet Rhode Island is poorly served by ISPs, with a statewide average speed of just 516 Kbps (that's 33rd place). But Rhode Islanders don't care: 57 percent reported satisfaction with their ISPs, bringing their state's ranking on the ISP satisfaction scale to second in the country. How peculiar! Clearly, Cox leads in the region, with 878-Kbps speeds.
Vermont
Population: 621,254
Area: 9,620 square miles
Web site: www.vermont.gov
Average speed: 391 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 47th
Satisfied users: 33 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $30
Broadband penetration: 56.3 percent
Vermont isn't the least-populated state in the unionthat designation falls to Wyoming, with its 522,830 residents. But at just over 621,000, it's the second-least-populated, even less populated than Alaska, according to the most recent U.S. census. Vermont also has some of the slowest broadband speeds in the country, with an average of just 391 Kbps. That's probably because of the slow speeds of regional Comcast connections, which are about half of the national averages for the ISP. Verizon DSL speeds, on the other hand, mesh nicely with the national averages.
The Midwest
ARTICLE DATE:
12.02.08
Over 17,000 users across the country ran our SurfSpeed application nearly a quarter of a million times, helping us to determine the speed of Web browsing in each of the 50 states. Roll your mouse over the Flash map below to see each state's SurfSpeed rank, based on the average speed of area Internet connectionsa higher rank mean faster surfing. Then scroll down the page to read our analysis of each state, to learn why it placed where it did and which regional ISPs were the fastest.

Illinois
Population: 12,852,548
Area: 57,914 square milesuare miles
Average speed: 681 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 11th
Satisfied users: 34 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $35
Broadband penetration: 61.1 percent
Sitting pretty as the 11th fastest state, the Land of Lincoln offers a wealth of choices to the choosy surfer. Comcast posted the best numbers in the state, at 888 Kbps, but Mediacom Online was no slouch, at 669 Kbps. DSL providers Verizon and AT&T were certainly slower, at 598 and 519 Kbps, respectively, but they both beat the national average for DSL lines by a fair bit. All this and Chicago, too!
Indiana
Population: 6,345,289
Area: 36,418 square miles
Average speed: 524 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 31st
Satisfied users: 34 percent
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