by With more people working from home (opens in new tab)fast internet connection is quickly becoming a necessity and new data from HighSpeedInternet.com has shown that internet speeds (opens in new tab) in the US have become a lot faster in recent years.
To compile the new report (opens in new tab)the site used data from its in-house internet speed testing tool to find the fastest and fastest growing ISPs.
Based on HighSpeedInternet.com’s analysis of millions of internet speed test results, Google Fiber (opens in new tab) was the fastest Internet service provider in the US last year with higher average upload and download speeds than any other Internet service provider (ISP). The service has a maximum advertised speed of up to 2000 Mbps and an average download speed over 12 months of 161.6 Mbps.
Verizon Fios (opens in new tab) was the second fastest Internet service provider with maximum advertised speeds of up to 940 Mbps, followed by Metronet, Xfinity (opens in new tab) and Astound Broadband. But between 2018 and 2021, major ISPs in the US saw their speeds increase year over year with major improvements in average speed performance.
Internet speeds in rural areas are still lagging
As Internet speeds increased in U.S. cities and other more congested areas, the shift from DSL to fiber Internet (opens in new tab) has made it more difficult to improve internet speeds in rural areas.
While fiber internet speeds often reach up to 1,000 Mbps, fiber availability across the country is much more limited, while DSL is widely available. However, ISPs have stopped expanding DSL in favor of fiber internet to provide their customers with faster internet.
For this reason, rural internet users have switched to satellite internet (opens in new tab) because they don’t rely on ISPs to run cables to connect their homes. However, satellite internet has its own limitations as each satellite provider has a limited number of satellites and expanding the satellite infrastructure for more bandwidth requires a lot of investment.
According to data from HighSpeedInternet.com, increasing customer needs during the pandemic may have put additional pressure on satellite providers as both HughesNet and Viasat saw their download speeds drop dramatically between July 2019 and July 2020.
However, national internet customers still have options like the Starlink rollout (opens in new tab) and 4G LTE Internet (opens in new tab) from mobile carriers like Verizon and T-Mobile have made it easier for them to get significantly faster internet compared to other satellite providers. Starlink last year had an average download speed of 55 Mbps, while 4G internet speeds ranged from 25 to 100 Mbps.
