Virginia is home to the fastest Internet in the country. Are you surprised?

Tech Times ^ | 08/10/2014 | By Christian Bautista

[SeekAndFind]

The northeastern part of the United States may be endowed with faster Internet than most other quadrants of the country. However, it doesn't have the undisputed champ in terms of Internet speed.

The fastest connection speed in the country belongs to the state of Virginia. The southern state, which is known for raising presidents and housing the CIA, has almost twice the Internet speed of Alaska, Arkansas, Kentucky and Montana.

A map from Internet services provider Broadview Networks shows the disparity in connection speeds in different parts of the country. In general, people in northern states seem to have faster Internet speeds than their southern brethren. However, there are states that don't fit this simplification. The states of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming rank low in terms of connection speeds, breaking rank with other states in the same region.

The map lifted its data from the latest State of the Internet report of New York-based cloud services company Akamai. In its rankings, Akamai revealed that Virginia clocked in with an average of 13.7 megabytes per second. Its closest rivals were Delaware and Massachusetts, which both registered connection speeds of 13.1 megabytes per second.

[OpusatFR]

Lets see, the worlds biggest naval base, the entire northern corridor a mix of Feds and contractors, lobbyists, finance and defense contractors. All adds up.

[Sequoyah101]

My AT&T DSL connection is slow and getting slower and more unreliable.

I sure wish I had an alternative.

The thing is downright quirky.

[Vermont Lt]

But if fiber has made it to the neighborhood, what is the limiting factor? Is it the copper on the street?

[sten]

the ‘last mile’ takes the longest to wire

if you have fiber in your neighborhood, you still need fiber to run into your home otherwise you’re limited by the old connection (which prolly wouldn’t be connected to the fiber)

[Enlightened1]

Verizon FIOS is a big reason for that.

I know AT&T has U-verse, but I don't think it is as good according to consumer reports.

[Vermont Lt]

Way back when, I was a general manager of a large, pretty complex system. I think it was “state of the art” double 550. I am familiar with broadband construction a la 1998 or so.

I know they rebuilt my system about five years ago. We are fiber to the node, but I have no idea of how big the node is (250-500 homes passed?)

I wouldn’t expect my provider to do another upgrade for another 10 years or so (we used to be on a 15 year rebuild) schedule.

I often wonder why they just don’t toss higher powered wifi on the poles in some of the more populated areas and let the folks get higher speeds off from that.

A few years before I left they had just wired the broadband and HD to our regional offices. I recall seeing the demonstration of high speed. I knew that the world changed that day. A few months later I saw my web browser.

Blew me away.

[rabidralph]

The backbone of the internet has always been in northern Virgina (Herndon, Vienna, Reston, etc.).

[rabidralph]

Because the broadband providers are happy with the speeds they are providing to us.

There was an interview on Bloomberg, provided by Charlie Rose, who interviewed SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. Go to the 35-second mark of the video to see Charlie ask the question and Son answers it.