After last year’s announcement that US broadband speeds lag behind most other developed countries in the world, it was expected that companies would make a concentrated effort to improve service to bring the speed of US broadband up to the level of that of countries such as the UK and Japan. However, in a report published by the Communications Workers of America labour union yesterday, it has been revealed that upload and download speeds remain for the most part unchanged across the US.
The report has been formulated by data from over 230,000 online speed tests across the US. It was reported that the average download speed in the US is 2.3 Mbps, compared to 63 Mbps in Japan and South Korea. The CWA plans to use these revealing figures to lobby legislative powers to develop a national broadband policy, to regulate broadband services and make it easier to improve speed and consistency across the USA. Larry Cohen, the union leader, has stated that the speed of broadband is vital for both “our economy and our ability to remain competitive in a global marketplace”. If successful, the push for a national broadband policy should lead to an improvement in the speed of US broadband.