Sometimes waiting for your Internet browser to load is a little like watching “The Little Engine That Could” – especially here in Illinois.
Illinois fell two spots in the latest annual ranking of Internet connection speeds in the United States, placing it in spot 14, the Sun-Times reports.
Despite falling in the rankings, Illinois’ average download speed still increased from 5.2 megabits per second in 2008 to 6.4 mbps this year.
And that’s ain’t bad considering 18 percent of the survey participants had such slow Internet access that they didn’t qualify as broadband users. To be considered a broadband user your service must meet a minimum of 768 kilobits per second.
Seven hundred and sixty-eight kilobits per second is very slooooooow.
For a map of Illinois' Internet speeds by county, check speedmatters.org.
The survey compiled information from more than 413,000 Internet users who took an online test between May 2008 and May 2009. Illinoisans represented 10,493 of the surveyors.
Tech
Internet connection speeds in the United States are slower than those in South Korea, Japan and Sweden, the union said. Those countries have Internet speeds which are “many times faster,” it said.
"The United States is still the only industrialized country without a national policy to promote high-speed Internet access, but that is set to change," the Communications Workers said in a press release. "A stipulation calling for a broadband rollout plan by spring 2010 was included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that passed earlier this year."
Come on, Internet browsers! We-think-you-can, we-think-you-can.
