Even Slovakian Internet Is Faster Than American Internet

Despite the fact that American companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Netflix and others dominate the tech world, America ranks number 31 in the world in Internet download speeds and 42nd in upload speeds. That’s pretty pathetic when you think that America is arguably the richest country in the world. I guess it’s not as shocking as the fact that we rank behind Romania and Hungary in education — the last time I checked we ranked 26th. Anyway…I don’t think the two are related, do you?

This article comes to us from a publication called The Week.

Why is American internet so slow?

The country that literally invented the internet is now behind Estonia in terms of download speeds 

According to a recent study by Ookla Speedtest, the U.S. ranks a shocking 31st in the world in terms of average download speeds. The leaders in the world are Hong Kong at 72.49 Mbps and Singapore on 58.84 Mbps. And America? Averaging speeds of 20.77 Mbps, it falls behind countries like Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Uruguay.

Its upload speeds are even worse. Globally, the U.S. ranks 42nd with an average upload speed of 6.31 Mbps, behind Lesotho, Belarus, Slovenia, and other countries you only hear mentioned on Jeopardy.

So how did America fall behind? How did the country that literally invented the internet — and the home to world-leading tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, Google, and Cisco — fall behind so many others in download speeds?

Susan Crawford argues that “huge telecommunication companies” such as Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and AT&T have “divided up markets and put themselves in a position where they’re subject to no competition.”

How? The 1996 Telecommunications Act — which was meant to foster competition — allowed cable companies and telecoms companies to simply divide markets and merge their way to monopoly, allowing them to charge customers higher and higher prices without the kind of investment in internet infrastructure, especially in next-generation fiber optic connections, that is ongoing in other countries…

Read the rest of this The Week article here.