The folks at Speed Maters have recently published the “first-ever state-by-state report on Internet connection speed”. The premise is that Speed Matters invited people to test their broadband speeds using the Speed Matters site from Sep 2006 to May 2007. (We mentioned it on the blog in February, 2007.) They have used that data to compile this report.

They have created a US map that tracks speeds by color. Red indicates speeds less than 768 kbps, yellow is 768 kbps to 6 mbps, and green is more than 6mbps. There isn’t a lot of green happening on the map. I see only the tiniest speck of green in Minnesota.

What is fun if that you can see (from the map) how many tests were done in a given state and the average upload and download speeds. In Minnesota, 1,186 people took the test; in North Dakota it was only 129; California had 9,227. You can also check out your zip code. In my zip code, 11 people took the test and the average download speed was 3,553 kbps.

Here are some of the numbers they found looking through my Minnesota glasses:
The median download speed in the US was 1.97 megabits per second (mbps)
The median download speed in Minnesota was 1.77 (mbps)
The median download in Japan is median download speed is 61 mbps

So, we’re like a good minor league baseball player – which is fine if you’re just competing with another minor league team – but wouldn’t we rather get called up to the big game? (Sorry it’s an amazingly beautiful day in MN and my mind may not be entirely on broadband. Although if I had higher speeds I could get my work done faster and head outside with the kids!)

It’s an interesting report and definitely worth checking out!