How "Fast" is Broadband?

[Commentary] Akamai recently released its quarterly The State of the Internet, a rich trove of information concerning Internet usage around the world. One portion of the Akamai report that has been widely quoted in the mainstream media covers broadband speeds. The Q4/2008 report, for the first time, ranks countries by average speed: tiny, dense South Korea (surprise) is #1 at 15 Mbps, the US ranks 17th at 3.9 Mps (others of note include Japan at 7 Mbps, Canada at 3.8 Mbps, Germany at 3.8 Mbps, France at 3.2 Mbps, India at 0.8 Mbps China at 0.8 Mbps, and Syria at a blistering 0.3 Kbps). All interesting data and useful fodder for activist governments wanting to spend taxpayer money to fix things. But while we don't really know the average "speed" of broadband connections around the world, the capacity of broadband networks is most likely higher than the Akamai report indicates. How much higher is impossible to determine. The primary problem is (most often) not the capacity of the broadband pipe but rather congestion within the overall broadband network. This congestion, while not deleterious to garden variety web browsing and emailing, severely hampers streaming video which, according to industry research firm IDC, will constitute slightly more than half of all downstream web traffic in the US by 2013. Consequently, as we endeavor to "fix" broadband with the $7.2 billion in stimulus funding, let's not lose sight of the fact that these are complex and heavily congested networks. Simply upping the size of the broadband pipe may not yield the performance improvements everyone professes to want.