Turns Out Our Mobile Broadband Is As Mediocre As Our Wireline Broadband.

[Commentary] It is time once again for folks to file comments in the Federal Communications Commission annual Notice of Inquiry on the Deployment of Advanced Telecommunications Services, aka the Section 706 Report (after Section 706 of the 1996 Act) aka the data (which along with FCC Form 477) which forms the basis for the FCC’s annual “State of the Broadband” report.

2015’s notice is particularly good, as (befitting a more mature broadband industry than we had when we started running this in 1998), so of course all those who would prefer we set the bar low enough to give ourselves a gold star for showing up hate it. Which makes these two reports on the state of broadband particularly timely. According to Akami, we rank 20th in global broadband speeds. Before the broadband industry and their cheerleaders counter that we have the best mobile broadband/most extensive LTE deployment in the world, I point to this new report from OpenSignal that finds we rank 54th in global mobile network speed. 20th and 54th. I’m so proud. USA! USA!