The Northeast has some of the fastest speeds in the nation, while the Midwest and less populated states have generally slower speeds.
Virginia is the state with the fastest average Internet speed, clocking in at a 13.7 megabits per second (mbps) average, according to a first-quarter report from Akamai. The cloud services company released its “State of the Internet” report in June, but Broadview Networks – another cloud services provider – pulled the state-by-state numbers from the report and publicized them via a nifty map earlier this week.
“Using Akamai’s ‘State of the Internet’ Report, we were able to find the average internet speed in each state,” Broadview said in a news release. “It’s no surprise that the Northeast has some of the fastest speeds in the nation, while the Midwest and less populated states have generally slower speeds.”
After Virginia, the rest of the top-five states are rounded out by Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and D.C. Alaska has the slowest Internet speeds with a 7 mbps average. Surprisingly, California, home of so many tech giants, is ranked a mediocre 20th, with an average speed of 10.9 mbps.
Still, even Virginia’s 13.7 mbps speeds are barely more than half the average 26.6 mbps Internet speeds enjoyed by South Korea. Overall, the U.S. average is 10.5 mbps, good for No. 10 worldwide.
Kansas demonstrated the most improvement over the past year, according to the report. The state increased its average speed by 91 percent. As noted by CNET, this increase likely owes much to the launch of Google’s super high-speed fiber Internet service in November 2012.
Leave a Reply