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High-Speed Internet? Take the Speed Matters Test and Find Out
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We’ve all been there—online waiting, and not patiently—for a connection to check the bank account, order medicine or just get the latest Hollywood gossip. You mutter to yourself, “This is high speed and it’s costing me how much a month?”
You might be one of those folks in a low-income urban or rural area where, even if you wanted to pay for high-speed Internet service, the only option available is the dreaded dial-up.
Now you can do something about it. Take the Speed Matters test.
Speed Matters, a campaign by the Communications Workers of America (CWA), is part of the union’s effort to promote national and state policies for affordable, universal high-speed broadband networks and end the digital divide. One of the campaign’s tools is the Speed Matters test that measures the speed of your Internet connection to see if it jives with speed your provider promised. Click here to take the Speed Matters test.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) currently is crafting its national broadband strategy. You can help shape this policy by testing your Internet speed. The results will be sent to the FCC to provide crucial data for its new policy.
Last year, for CWA’s second annual Speed Matters report, more than 230,000 people took the campaign’s speed test on their home computers and found that we’re not downloading or uploading much faster than the previous year.
Also last year, CWA President Larry Cohen told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation the United States ranked at bottom of the world’s top industrialized nations in high-speed broadband access. He noted that the 2008 study by CWA’s Speed Matters initiative found the Internet speed in this country is so slow that at the current rate of improvement, it would take 100 years to match the world’s current speed leader, Japan.
Cohen told the committee high-speed Internet means more than just faster movie and music downloads.
Job creation, rural development, telemedicine, distance learning, even solutions to global warming all rely on truly high-speed universal networks.
Not only does the United States rank 15th in the industrialized world in Internet speed, it is virtually the only industrialized country without a national high-speed Internet policy.
CWA says the government invests relatively less on telecommunications than most other major countries. Consumers are charged more for slower speeds, and current high-speed networks don’t even reach millions of American households.
Every day, American businesses are missing out on opportunities to sell their goods and services in the global marketplace. Every day, the American people are missing out on important health and educational benefits. And every day, the American economy is missing out on good jobs created by broadband.
The FCC is working to fix this right now, and your data will help the federal agency develop the best possible policy. Test your Internet speed and be part of the effort to bring the benefits of affordable high-speed Internet access to all of us.
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4 Comments
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Well, Comcast connection in Chicago rated higher than the rest of the USA and 3 other countries. Doesn’t look bad to me.
The FCC implimented Digital TV by selling the public airwave bandwidths to Cell phone and other companies for millions of dollars profit. The US government should make up for that mis-appropriation of public property by providing FREE nationwide wireless highspeed access for every citizen.
i pay nearly 100 dollars a month to have high speed access that is faster than the “average” Iowan; still far slower than what is received for free in other countries. And still my internet goes down regularly and often, and it still won’t load many pages. I’m glad the fellow in Chicago is happy with his service since he’s in the third largest city in the nation.
My ATT connection in Madison is rated higher than the rest of the USA and isn’t that far behind the European Countries.
I’m not sure about what is “free in other countries.” My friend, who lives in England has to pay every time he goes out onto the Internet, so they don’t use it very often.
Plus, I crack up over the fact that we are compared to countries smaller than the state of Montana. Maybe that is why they are further ahead, they don’t have the huge country to provide coverage for nor the many competing internet companies.