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Who Has Fastest, Cheapest Internet in the World?

by - source: Tom's Hardware US

Where should you go for ludicrous speed?

Despite how often we hear that the U.S. lags behind other countries in terms of internet speed (which is still true), the fastest internet in the world, according to a report from Akamai Technologies, is in Berkeley, California at an average speed of 18.7Mbps.

In fact, the second and third fastest internet offerings in the world are also in the U.S., in Chapel Hill, NC (average speed: 17.5Mbps) and Stanford, Calif. (average speed: 17.0Mbps) Of course, the obvious linkage there is that the internet is tied closely to those using the access granted by educational institutions with fast internet connections, clearly skewing the average upward.

When not including any of the U.S. cities with a major college in town, the list of fastest internet connected places moves over to Asia.

On a similar note, how would you like to get 1Gbps fiber for just $26? If you live in Hong Kong, that's a reality. Thanks to an offer from City Telecom, those living in Hong Kong can get 1Gbps fiber internet access for just HK$199, which is around US$26. Getting phone service with that is just another US$3, and TV will cost another US$6-12.

Of course, things are different in North America. Some select few in the U.S. will be graced by Google fiber, the search giant's 1Gbps experiment.

As for those in Canada, western ISP Shaw Communications has announced that it is testing 1Gbps fiber services in Calgary and Edmonton in Alberta and Vancouver, BC.

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Parsian 04/21/2010 2:57 AM
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-4+

sweet that means SHAW's monopoly is going to be even better with 1Gbps

mlopinto2k1 04/21/2010 2:58 AM
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-13+

This will be the new speed war. Kinda like when MB's turned into GB's in hard drives and Mhz into Ghz in CPU's. :bounce:

gekko668 04/21/2010 3:03 AM
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I guess those cities list above have the several competition companies, therefore have the highest average speed rating.

buckcm 04/21/2010 3:05 AM
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SSDs would sell a lot better if everyone had 1 gbps internet. If Comcast offers these speeds ever, we'll be able to use all 500 GB of cap space in a little over an hour.

RazberyBandit 04/21/2010 3:06 AM
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-5+

High school gamers! If you want a fast internet connection, enroll at Duke, Stanford, or Cal Berkeley and get your frag on!

blackbyron 04/21/2010 3:08 AM
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Anonymous 04/21/2010 3:07 AM
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micr0be 04/21/2010 3:07 AM
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Anonymous 04/21/2010 3:07 AM
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-20+

So how is 18.7Mbps the fastest in the world if you can get 1Gbps in Hong kong???

scifiguy 04/21/2010 3:08 AM
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Thats weird, I have 1 Gbps fiber at work. And it is NOT an educational institute.

XD_dued 04/21/2010 3:23 AM
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Hmmm...i have 8mbit/s :(

zaam 04/21/2010 3:26 AM
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That's it. I'm switching to Shaw.

soldier37 04/21/2010 3:28 AM
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Using Comcast here in the south I get 30 to 85mps paying $75 a month just for internet, Cable an additional $25 (No Box). Im just fine with my speed for now, 1GPS would be sweet but will be some time before I see that around here Im sure.

Anonymous 04/21/2010 3:32 AM
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22mbit/s here in Russia/Moscow for $30, 100mbit/s for $57
WiMAX up to 10.4mbit/s wireless for $30 per month anywhere in five largest cities

haunted one 04/21/2010 3:37 AM
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-14+

I'm happy with my speed. REMOVE THE BANDWIDTH CAPS

jsc 04/21/2010 3:38 AM
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Saudi Arabia - 1 mbit/sec for about the equivalent of $60 a month.

acecombat 04/21/2010 3:45 AM
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And for those who complain about speeds in the US, come to Australia where most areas only have up to 1.5mb at ridiculous prices (about $55USD for 20gb)

TidalWaveOne 04/21/2010 3:55 AM
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18.7Mbps? I have 35Mbps!

fflam 04/21/2010 4:01 AM
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i wonder how much user choice lowers the speed totals. here in the greater Seattle area Comcast offers 12mb, 16mb, 22mb and 50mb internet connections. there are 2 competitors one quest offers a 1.5mb dsl, and the other is clear (WiFi) witch is around the same (though i think they are speeding up soon). there are still alot of people that go with the slower internet (at around the same price as Comcast mind you) for what ever reason (not arguing the reason they chose who they chose). so how much does that chose skew the results of the survey.

also i noticed on the akamai website, it shows the top speed for Redmond at 5mb, and there visual graph starts to top out at 2mb.. numbers just look screwy to me.

rdawise 04/21/2010 4:05 AM
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RazberyBandit :
High school gamers! If you want a fast internet connection, enroll at Duke, Stanford, or Cal Berkeley and get your frag on!



You mean UNC Chapel Hill. Duke is in Durham, NC.

7amood 04/21/2010 4:11 AM
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I have 20GB cap with up to 2mbps (depending on network availability) for 85$

welcome to bahrain

elkein 04/21/2010 4:14 AM
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Leftover bandwidth, what are you going to watch with a Gb/s line... that is censored.

hok 04/21/2010 4:34 AM
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The Hong Kong speed is pretty useless unless you are surfing inside the island, since its all bottlenecked to a few lines outside of Hong Kong it really slows down once you try to do large transfers with US or EURO...

pojih 04/21/2010 4:39 AM
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In the dorms at Michigan State I was getting around 25 down from the wall.

Was nice, especially once I moved off campus and had to get Comcast.

soundefx 04/21/2010 4:39 AM
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All this speed in the US but you're limited in the amount you can download. To me, that is both frustrating and useless.

edilee 04/21/2010 4:40 AM
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scifiguy :
Thats weird, I have 1 Gbps fiber at work. And it is NOT an educational institute.


I was thinking this was odd also and I just tested it to make sure but I come in at 73.54mbps and I am on Comcast and not near any schools. I will also add the speeds have been super high lately and I normally average in the mid 20mbps range which I think is a more acurate figure. I do not have Comcast's highest speed either and I am actually 2 tiers below their highest. I think some figures in this article are inaccurate.

Anonymous 04/21/2010 4:45 AM
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The article refers to average speeds of every internet subscriber. I'm on Shaw in Edmonton with a 15Mb/s for 55/month. 1 Gb/s will be mad expensive when it comes, the 25 Mbit is 100 and 100 Mbit is 150.

dogofwars 04/21/2010 4:53 AM
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I've got 30Mbits/Sec at work and that is because it's the max you can achieve per station. The pipe of the company is probably bigger because we did some test on some computer at the same time ;)

infernojericho 04/21/2010 4:58 AM
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-9+

Hi there, just to let you guys know that I live in Hong Kong.

There are some catches to these broadband services. Availability is rather limited, because HK Telecom (along with another provider Hutchison), does not have their optical cables laid everywhere in Hong Kong. PCCW has almost 100% coverage, but generally also has the highest prices.

Not only that, these prices does not apply everywhere. These prices usually apply to the government housing projects, where the spending power is usually lower. The place where I live is a private estate, and HK Telecom is not available in where I live at least for another year or two. The only available providers in where I live is PCCW and Hutchison, but since PCCW is so much expensive, and for Hutchison seeing there is no HK Telecom to compete with them at my place, the prices are much higher. I pay around $135HKD ($17.5USD) a month for a 30MB broadband, telephone landline, and free wifi services in the Hutchison wifi hotspots.

Last of all, there is a catch in the speed. The 1Gigabit speed is only available with local downloads, foreign downloads is significantly less (since leasing the foreign cables is a lot more expensive). I would expect a foreign download speed of around 20-30MB only.

Thanks for reading!

The Dark Wall 04/21/2010 5:05 AM
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Yay ^^ I live in Hong Kong but how come I still haven't heard about this?

I'm stuck with a 10mb/s connection : /

4ILY45 04/21/2010 6:09 AM
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5GB cap on a 3.6 Mbps (HSPDA so speeds may vary) for $28

welcome to Malaysia..

Getting throttled is FUN!!!! /s


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