Ookla

Speedtest by Ookla analyzed how much internet speeds have increased over the past four years, and which countries have seen some of the largest gains. Major findings include:

Starlink is still in beta phase, but Ookla decided to use data from Speedtest Intelligence to investigate Q1 2021 performance in the US and Canada to see if the program is living up to expectations. In the US  during Q1 2021, median download speeds from Starlink ranged from 40.36 Mbps in Columbia County, Oregon to 93.09 Mbps in Shasta County, California.

Speedtest Intelligence reveals AT&T was the fastest mobile operator in the US in Q2 2020 with a Speed Score of 41.23 on modern chipsets in competitive geographies. T-Mobile was the second fastest, Sprint third and Verizon Wireless fourth. Although Sprint merged with T-Mobile earlier in 2020, Ookla considered the companies’ performance separately as the networks have not been fully integrated. We will combine their results when the integration is complete.

With gigabit expanding across the nation, fixed broadband speeds in the US are rapidly increasing. Speedtest data from Q2-Q3 2018 reveals a 35.8 percent increase in mean download speed during the last year and a 22.0 percent increase in upload speed. As a result, the US ranks 7th in the world for download speed, between Hungary and Switzerland. The US ranks 27th for upload, between Bulgaria and Canada. Though 5G looms on the mobile horizon, fixed broadband speeds in the US continue to outpace those on mobile showing both faster speeds and greater increases in speed.

With a mean global speed of 20.28 Mbps, mobile downloads increased 30.1% over the last 12 months and mobile uploads increased 38.9%. A global average of 40.11 Mbps makes fixed broadband downloads 97.8% faster than mobile and this speed increased 31.6% during the same period. Uploads over fixed broadband showed the smallest increase of 25.9%.