The Northeast region is graced with the fastest Internet in the country, a new report suggests. Yet Virginia, which is obviously not in the Northeast, is home to the speediest service of any state, claims Akamai Technologies.
The Akamai "State of the Internet" report reveals the speed of one's Internet has some marked differences depending on where one lives.
The Southern part of the country is home to some of the slowest speeds around, followed by Idaho and Montana as the worst services in the country. But the Northeast, Virginia and the West Coast have some of the fastest speeds for getting online and browsing.
It's still a far cry from South Korea's average Internet speed of 23.6 Mbps. Virginia is tops in the country with an average speed of 13.7 megabits per second, while Alaska has the slowest in the country, clocking in at just 7 Mbps.
The United States average is 10.5 Mbps.
Globally, the U.S. appears to be doing well, topping Internet speeds in the Americas, but still lagging behind many European countries, as well as Japan and Hong Kong. The Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and others beat out the U.S. in what speeds they offer their citizens. Denmark's speed levels are on par with the U.S.
The Internet and its speed has become a major issue of research over the past few years as companies attempt to increase the functionality of their services and apps.
"This provides us with unique visibility into Internet connection speeds, broadband adoption, mobile usage, outages, and attacks," says Akamai.
But speeds in the U.S. could be getting some extra boost, at least if the big providers have their way and fast lanes are established to give certain customers more bandwidth to stream video and other content.
As Tech Times reports the controversy over such 'fast lanes' could be a threat to net neutrality and a level playing field.
If the FCC does allow such fast lanes, some experts say it would lead to user frustration and an increase in the number of paywalls on websites, eliminating what has been an open Internet.
The White House stated this week it is opposed to both scenarios.
