U.S. Broadband Speed Still Lagging – SpeedMatters.org

SpeedMatters.org recently concluded a survey exemplifying the embarrassing brick wall (likely agreed upon by telco and cable monopolists and duopolists) keeping out broadband Internet speeds at low levels relative to the rest of the world. At 2.3Mbps average download speeds, last mile connectivity has only inched up in the past year, according to the report (PDF), and it would be decades before we experienced the speeds and functionality experienced by internet users in Japan, who connect at over 60Mbps.

Evident in the unscientific studies is the sharp increase in business districts in which connectivity is often an expensive T1 connection, as opposed to publicly available high speed broadband (which here in LA, is mainly limited to AT&T and Comcast, although competitors such as Speakeasy are able to offer better service at slightly higher rates). California ranks 25th in SpeedMatters’ survey of median download speeds. how does your state rank?

I’ve documented the U.S.’s position on broadband ubiquity and connectivity many times, as well as it’s position in relation to other OECD countries throughout here and here. I first profiled SpeedMatters.org (a project of the Communications Workers of America union) here and encourage everyone to participate in their call to action:

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GMAIL DOWN OH NOES



GMAIL DOWN OH NOES, originally uploaded by revolute.

The great Gmail outage of 2008 is now and productivity has come to a screeching halt across much of the world. I thought I might be at least able to access my LAist e-mail but that crapped out on me as well. Fortunately, most of my e-mail arrives at andy[at]netzoo … although Gmail is my preferred e-mail client/app for sorting/searching, etc.

What the hell do we do now, Google?

Google’s html interface (access it via this link: https://mail.google.com/mail/h/ is still functioning for many as is GMAIL via IMAP / mail.app)