What is everyone's Internet speed like? (In relation to Google Stadia being announced...)

[EricHiggin]

shikamaru317 said:

Ka-pi96 said:

Faster than 53% of the US? Well relatively speaking yours is actually pretty decent then. But wow, the US must have some pretty bad internet around, I wonder if some people are still on dial up or something

34 million Americans (roughly 1/10 of the population) don't have access to high speed internet currently (high speed is defined as 25 mbps or higher), mainly due to living in rural areas where the only options are DSL (which is typically capped at 3 mbps) or satellite internet (which isn't great either, due to latency and small data caps). The cable companies aren't willing to run cable to rural areas where the population is less than 200 people per square mile because they can't get enough money through subscriptions to cover the cost of running the cable and the Cell companies aren't willing to put 4G LTE towers out into those areas for the same reason, and since alot of US states have large rural areas (Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Alaska, West Virginia, South Dakota, North Dakota, Kansas, etc.) there are alot of people that don't have access to fast internet currently.

Microsoft thankfully wants to change that and is investing billions of their own money into telecommunications companies to bring high speed to rural areas via white space signals:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/07/microsoft-will-help-isps-bring-wireless-internet-to-12-us-states/

You would think they could charge more to the urban customers who get the first crack at the upgrades, and use that to offset the extra installation cost for most if not all of the rural customers who would always get served second and have to wait. Crazy idea I know.

It's almost as if MS would actually like for people to be able to use that cloud thing they're always talking up eh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation) 

Tesla is also working on Starlink, a low orbit satellite program.

"Starlink satellites would orbit at ​¹⁄₃₀ to ​¹⁄₁₀₅ of the height of geostationary orbits, and thus offer more practical latencies of around 25 to 35 ms, comparable to or exceeding existing cable or fiber networks."

"In November 2018, SpaceX received US approval to deploy 7,518 broadband satellites, in addition to the 4,425 satellites that were approved earlier."