Tuesday, March 09, 2010

HoCo Broadband in Top 25

Howard County ranks 25 in the list of the 25 fastest broadband counties in the US. According to this story by Rich Karpinski in Connected Planet, “Howard County in Maryland, had speeds of 10.7 megabits down and 2.8 megabits up, according to Craig Settles, a broadband consultant who works with local communities on broadband projects and who is a business partner with ID Insight on the Broadband Scout project”

The top county, Nassau County, NY, had “a median download speed of 15.0 megabits per second and a median upload speed of 4.4 megabits per second.”

Howard County wasn’t the fastest county in Maryland either. Calvert County in Southern Maryland was ranked 15.

This was likely one of the reasons we didn’t make the cut for the federal broadband stimulus grant. It can’t help our chances for attracting Google’s fiber test either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, maybe it makes a case for our bid for Google: "We're so slow...help us!"

Then again, you should take a look at the stats for the USA in the international broadband race. A close friend lives in one of the poorest countries in Eastern Europe, and she has HD voice to her cell and wireless broadband to her netbook. Which means she can update her facebook page while sitting in her unheated outhouse.

Go figure. It has to do with the evolution of technology. This country had one phone per village, maybe, when copper was the route for the POTS. In the last ten years, they leap-frogged a few generations of technology and just started putting up towers.

Personally, I'll pick the indoor plumbing with heat and FIOS any day.

Although, I am a bandwidth whore...bring it on, Google!

MaybeKathy said...

That's not going to help with my ongoing battle with Verizon to try and get FiOS at my house. Last I heard they had no plans to wire up existing neighborhoods, just new developments.