the staff of the Ridgewood blog
This month marks one year since the FCC repealed the controversial Obama era net neutrality rules. According to America’s left it would be killing the internet as we knew it forever , but in this post internet apocalyptic world one report shows that download speeds are actually up 35.8 percent.
Many will remember the hysteria when Democrats marched onto Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. and demanded that lawmakers stop a vote to repeal Net Neutrality? Liberals argued, and the Federal Communications Commission decision would take the country back to the stone age, well it didn’t, In fact, internet speeds across the board are faster than ever before.
The internet has been a household commodity available for public use since August 6, 1991 and gone fully mainstream since 1994 ,but according to net neutrality’s most fervent supporters, the internet didn’t truly take off until February 2015, when the FCC passed and adopted the new rules.
Net neutrality sought to define the internet as a public utility, putting it in the same category as water, electric, and telephone services. Doing so left it open to regulatory oversight, specifically when it came to connection speeds and the price providers were allowed to charge consumers for its use.
Cynics saw it as a power grab , to regulate and control the content you see on the internet .
Since the repeal Internet speeds have gone up by nearly 40 percent, per the 2018 Speedtest U.S. Fixed Broadband Performance Report.
“With gigabit expanding across the nation, fixed broadband speeds in the United States are rapidly increasing. Speedtest® data reveals a 35.8% increase in mean download speed during the last year and a 22.0% increase in upload speed,” internet speed-test company Ookla reports. “As a result, the U.S. ranks 7th in the world for download speed, between Hungary and Switzerland. The U.S. ranks 27th for upload, between Bulgaria and Canada, during Q2-Q3 2018.”
The internet is getting faster, especially fixed broadband internet. Broadband download speeds in the U.S. rose 35.8 percent and upload speeds are up 22 percent from last year, according to internet speed-test company Ookla in its latest U.S. broadband report.
The growth in speed is important as the internet undergirds more of our daily lives and the wider economy. As internet service providers continue building out fiber networks around the country, expect speeds to increase, though speeds vary widely by region depending on infrastructure and whether or not an area has fiber.
As of October, the U.S. ranked seventh in the world in broadband and 43rd in mobile download speeds — a slight increase in rank from last year. Broadband is twice as fast as mobile. Broadband speed growth is also outpacing mobile. The rollout of 5G mobile connections should help.
Once again demonstrating the fact is that less government regulation results in better outcomes for both companies and consumers. So the next time we are told that a lack of regulation is going to be the end of life as we know it, we would do well to remember what really happened when the government finally freed the internet from its grasp.
