Speedtest.net Ookla has recently unveiled their latest report for the United States and it states that the overall Internet speeds have become faster in the country with average speeds reaching 54.97Mbps.
There is still some bad news in Ookla's report as while the speeds in the U.S. certainly picked up, the country is still lagging behind the rest of the world. The U.S.'s average upload speeds have increased by 51 percent to 18.88Mbps which means that the whole country is still relying mostly on asynchronous speed plans.
One of the reasons for the huge increase in the speed is Alphabet's further rollout of their Google Fiber, Motley Fool has learned. Rival Internet service providers have also been pushed to do better as Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon and the others strive to provide better service in order to best the competitors.
Internet access has and is still an issue for several parts of the world as some have no access at all while others have booming fast download and upload speeds. The rollout of 4G LTE networks have also helped but it still does not cover all of the areas across the globe.
Another huge factor for the 40 percent increase in the download speeds in the U.S. is the significant growth of the fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connections, ExtremeTech reported. They are faster and more reliable than the current DSL lines that are still being used in a majority of homes across the world.
The fastest ISP in the U.S. reported by Ookla is XFINITY with download speeds of up to 125Mbps but it lacks in upload speed as it only has 15.26Mbps. Meanwhile, the ISP with the fastest upload speeds is Verizon Fios with up to 93.64Mbps.
Mobile download and upload speeds in the U.S. have also increased by 30 percent on the average. The average download speed is reported as 19Mbps which is not bad considering that mobile Internet connections are wireless and are often unstable.
Verizon Wireless is reported to be the fastest mobile carrier with 21.11Mbps on the download speed with T-Mobile at a close 21.02Mbps. However, the latter does have a faster upload speed of 11.59Mbps compared to the former's 8.22Mbps.