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Streaming HD movies, downloading music and using data-heavy video chat services like Skype and FaceTime can make basic broadband speeds seem a bit sluggish.
But you do have options. We compared packages from three of the larger broadband providers in the country — Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon — to find out how much you should pay and what you’ll get for those extra dollars.
How Fast Is Your Broadband Now?
The average speed that Americans get from their home Internet service is 5.8 megabits per second (Mbps). Those numbers may seem decent, but those speeds place the United States in 13th place worldwide, behind countries like Latvia, the Czech Republic and Romania. Even Boston (which has the fastest Internet service in America) only averages 8.4Mbps — speeds that wouldn’t place it in the top 50 cities worldwide.
America’s slow broadband speeds aren’t due to lack of availability but a lack of knowledge among cable companies’ customers. Cable companies push low-end broadband packages because they are usually cheaper — and much slower. For instance, most Verizon customers don’t have a clue that Verizon offers broadband with speeds of 300Mbps — the fastest broadband connection in the country, enough to download a two-hour HD movie in less than two minutes.
What Are Your High-Speed Options?
Aside from Verizon’s world-class offering (which costs $204 per month), there are other extremely fast options from all three companies. Coming in right behind Verizon’s highest broadband package is a 150Mbps offering that costs $94 per month. Another option is a $84-per-month plan that will get you speeds of 75Mbps. But be aware of the hidden costs with Verizon: All of these prices are contingent upon a two-year contract (if you don’t sign, the price goes up $5 a month, plus you have to pay a $100 equipment fee) as well as Verizon’s home phone service (another $5-a-month surcharge if you don’t have it).
Time Warner Cable also has faster options for you, but they are nowhere near Verizon’s offering. Time Warner’s highest plan is $79 per month, which gets you speeds of 50Mbps for your home Internet needs. For $49 and $39 er month, you can get speeds of 30Mbps and 20Mbps, respectively. All of these prices are promotional and will increase after the first year.
Comcast does offer higher speeds than Time Warner Cable, but it comes at a premium. At 105Mbps, Comcast’s fastest option comes in at $199 per month, $5 cheaper than Verizon’s highest option, which offers speeds nearly three times as fast. For $115 per month with Comcast, you will get speeds of 50Mbps, while $72 a month will bring you speeds of 30Mbps.
Is It Worth the Money?
If you live alone and are not an avid Internet user, you may not need this kind of speed. But if you live with techies or have teenagers who are constantly on the web, it will definitely come in handy.
Your broadband connection shares a trait with your water heater — if everyone uses the hot water at the same time, the water will lose heat more quickly than it would otherwise. The same is true with broadband. If you are streaming Netflix and surfing the web on your iPad, your 5Mbps Internet connection will take much longer to download that large file than it usually does.
If you are experiencing slow speeds or just want a faster connection, a super-fast Internet connection is definitely worth the money. If you do choose to upgrade, you will miss out on all the fun of buffering Netflix shows, slow-loading YouTube clips and long waits for file downloads — but we’re sure you’ll find something to do with all that free time.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Goodluz
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Tecca is a Mashable publishing partner that offers news and reviews of gadgets and technology. This article is reprinted with the publisher's permission.
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You know in Canada we are paying $40 for 10Mbps plus they are not unlimited usage. I wish I can get faster speed at the same price and unlimited usage, so I can at least use internet without having to worry about exceed my limit.
We pay $40AUD and get an average of about 0.04 Mbps, it’s so slow it often becomes unusable!
So stop complaining about “slow” speeds xD
Should You Pay Extra for Faster Internet at Home?
America’s slow broadband speeds aren’t due to lack of availability but a lack of knowledge among cable companies’ customers .
i wanted to use oooooh so many ” F ” WORDS after i read that sentence .
but i refrained , just as the author of this article should have refrained .
this article could have easily been a press hand-out by any of the
broad-band providers ?
this article in no way tried to critique the customer experience with
any of these poor service , over priced providers ?
and this article used ” cable company ” & ” broad-band service ”
as if they were interchangeable terms ?
as we all know , broad-band internet can originate from ,
yes cable , but also satellite , wireless cell , and 100 year old phone-service .
Americans pay more for service & get less in speed & service ,
than the rest of the developing world .
South Korea is the country with the best internet speed ,
this year Korea had a 17.5-Mbps avg. , with a 48-Mbps peak speed .
the average Korean’s internet bill is , … $28.50 !!!!!!!!
i pay AT&T $30 per/month , … and my last speed test was , … 0.59-Mbps ????
i have complained for 6 years to both AT&T and the FCC .
AT&T enjoys a monopoly in my area .
every service provider i call says that they have no plans
to provide service here ?
for the last 2 years i have had one of those ” SAMKNOWS ” white-boxes
plugged into my modem sending monthly report cards to the FCC .
AT&T , like most providers will not guarantee a minimum speed ??
they will advertise a MAXIMUM speed , but most customers will
never see those advertised speeds .
the title to this article should have been ;
why aren’t broad-band customers
getting what they paid for ????
Were you honestly expecting non-biased reporting on this site or anywhere else in the media? I’m with you but it’s a losing battle.
What the fuck do they mean by countries like Latvia, the Czech Republic and Romania. ? ?
I pay $30-40 a month for ATT and the most I can get from them is 1mbps. I was grandfathered in, no more construction is being done in the area, and no provider (ATT, Comcast, etc) will provide any faster alternatives. I would love to have something more reasonable, especially trying to run a home business. But it just isn’t possible. It frustrates me so much. It comes down to a matter of a few feet, and ATT can’t do anything about it. So they’re able to feed a subdivision across the street from my house and a half mile down the road from my house but not my house itself.
I pay about $40 (USD) a month and they tell me that’s for something like 12-15 MBPS, however, when all my neighbors are online it dips really, really fast. One of the problems with cable broadband where I live is that we’re all sharing the same cables rather than completely individualized connections. I’m not willing to pay more just for streaming movies, which is the only bandwidth-heavy thing I do.
What I do object to is when I hear companies trying to charge per download usage like the cellphone companies are doing. That talk bothers me because it seems like pure greed. Cable companies are utilities even though they act like regular businesses.
One thing I will object to articles like this is when you speak without regard to financial impact. I think we’d all love more speed but not everyone out there can afford to up that speed. Perhaps the article should have spoken a bit more about that angle of things.