Friday, August 15, 2008

Slow Traffic on Iowa's Internet

Slow Traffic on Iowa's Internet

If the Internet is the information superhighway, then Iowa's traffic is stuck behind a slow moving, two-lanes-wide combine.

In tests conducted by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Iowa had the seventh slowest broadband speed of the 50 states plus D.C. The average download speed of 1,455 kbps was just over half the national average of 2,346 kbps.

Iowa joined a group of rural states at the bottom of the rankings. Speeds were slowest in Alaska and fastest in the small Eastern states, with Rhode Island at number one.

Still, even Rhode Island's relatively speedy 6,769 kbps connections leave one staring at the hourglass a lot longer than you do in Japan, where average speeds are estimated at 63 mbps, nearly ten times faster.

"The United States has not made significant improvements in deploying high-speed broadband networks in the past year," said the CWA report. "Our nation continues to lag behind other industrial nations and currently is ranked 15th in the percentage of residents who have broadband access."

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