We're the 32nd Slowest!

Microsoft, Amazon, Disney, Nintendo, The Robot Co-Op; the list of big name tech companies in the Puget Sound region includes some of the biggest, which is why we were surprised by the recent bandwidth report that ranked Washington 18th among U.S. states in high-speed internet access. Illinois is 17th, Michigan is 19th. Two fine states but what tech shops do they have? Rhode Island is number one, Kansas 2 and Jersey 3. Apparently the presence of large technology companies has shit to do with the speed of the general interweb in a region. California is 38th (phbbbbttt!) and South Dakota is dead 50th, which should be a warning to us all. Don't be like SD. We take it on faith that a slow internet leads directly to things like full-on abortion bans, although when we tried making a Red State vs Blue State map with these speed rankings it didn't pan out.

The report says that the median download speed in Washington is 2.18 megabits per second, 1.97 mbps in the U.S. and 61 mbps in Japan. We want to be like Japan (although we don't have any cutesy progressive politics links to back that up). Wow, 61mbps is fast... What the hell can you even do with that much consumer bandwidth? Faster than real time movie downloads, high def video phones, uh, YouTube Presidential debates...etc. Doesn't seem like we're going to have to worry about it, though. Things don't look likely to improve here--at least we don't detect a groundswell of revolution against the slow-as-hell cable/DSL conglomerates and it certainly isn't going to be thrust on us by them. Bradley Meacham says it well at Cascadia Report:

How much traction can the issue gain when cable and phone companies tout their services as "blazing fast," despite data that suggest otherwise? Citizens are hardly taught to expect more. I'm the first to admit that I don't know if my service is slow because of Comcast, my connection or my computer.

We did ok on our speed test (see graphic: almost as fast as the median d/l speed in Canada!) but that's a Downtown Seattle office. At home we expect Comcast would give us significantly less love. How fast are you, and are you satisfied with that? Are your download speeds "fast enough"?