Measuring Broadband Speeds

I recently ran into this article which discusses the problems with the way the FCC measures broadband penetration. Basically, they measure it based on the zip code and assume that if one person can get it in the zip code then everyone can. That is just an inaccurate generalization.

This brings me to another pet peeve of mine. I am perfectly happy with the download speeds from Comcast cable. They are quite fast at up to 6 Mbs/sec. This is much faster than I ever got with DSL and the performance has been consistent for me. The problem that frustrates me immensely is upload speed. All of the broadband providers that I have seen provide horrid upload speeds. This Comcast line uploads at around 382 Mb/sec which is about 1/20th of the downstream bandwidth. Why do I care, the reality is that I tend to upload a large number of photographic files and get frustrated. IMO, broadband should be measured on both upload and download and just saying that one is fast does not mean that the connection is fast. In other countries, upload speeds are not limited like they are here.

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