U.S. Broadband Statistics
Is it important to consider the download speed of a web page or file on the Internet when designing a Web site? Absolutely.
Case in point: Early this year, we received a request from a client to upload a large video file to their web server and link that video file to a web page for Internet viewing. The original file was 104 MB. It needed to be reduced in size to load quickly enough so that Internet viewers would not get frustrated and click away.
This scenario raised the questions:
- How many adult Americans have high-speed Internet connection in their homes?
- What is the average download speed of U.S. Internet users?
Although absolute data is difficult to gather, three organizations have recently published U.S. broadband statistics. The state of the U.S. broadband rankings among industrial nations is one that is disheartening.
ITIF Broadband Rankings
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) is a nonprofit organization that was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Washington, DC. The organization is a non-partisan research and education institute with the mission is to formulate and promote public policies to advance technological innovation and productivity internationally.
ITIF released the 2008 ITIF Broadband Rankings report in May and disturbingly, the U.S. ranked 15th among industrial nations at a composite score* of 10.25. The U.S. is reported to have an average download speed of 4.9 Mbps, which is a far distant behind Japan’s 63.6 Mbps. In addition, the report states that the U.S. broadband penetration comes in at 0.57%.
Pew Internet & American Life Project U.S. Broadband Use
Pew Internet & American Life Project is a nonprofit organization that is headquartered in Washington, DC. The project is an initiative of the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit “fact tank” that provides information on attitudes, trends and issues that shape America and the world. Pew Internet explores the impact of the Internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care and civic/political life. The Project is nonpartisan and takes no position on policy issues.
In July, the organization released the report, Home Broadband Adoption 2008. This report is based on an analysis of the Internet activity from 2,251 American adults, 1,153 that were Internet broadband users. The results showed that 55% of adults had broadband use in their homes. This is an increase of 22% from the 2005 statistics that revealed 33%.
Speed Matters U.S. Broadband Rankings
Speed Matters, is a project of Communication Workers of America (CWA) based in Washington, DC. The organization has the goal of to raise awareness and to obtain universal, affordable access to high speed Internet services in the United States to assure economic growth.
On August 12, 2008, the organization released the second annual Report on Internet Speeds in All 50 States. The results are based on 230,000 U.S. Internet users that voluntarily took the online Internet speed tests from May 2007 to May 2008. Alarmingly, the new report showed little overall improvement over U.S. Internet speed test data from the previous report period. The overall average download speed was 2.3 megabits per second (mbps).
U.S. Ranks 15th
It is an amazing concept to grasp that the country that invented the Internet, the United States, now ranks 15th in high-speed Internet penetration. Although there has been a great deal of debate about the reliability of the various data, it is clear that there is a great deal of room for improvement to be made for Internet connection speed in the U.S.
As high speed Internet connections become more available to the general public, web designers may be compelled to relax general recommendations for the load time of web pages. Considering that two reports indicate a range of 43% to 45% of U.S. homes have Internet connections other than high speed connections and that Internet download speeds vary widely, the load time of a web page remains a fundamental design consideration.
* Composite Score: Each nation’s overall score is the sum of its standard deviation score for each of the three indicators: Household penetration or subscribers per household, average download speed in Mbps and price at the lowest monthly cost per Mbps.
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