Virginia Has The Fastest Internet In The US, While Alaska Has The Slowest

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports – Your Universe Online
The official Virginia tourism website proudly touts the state’s beaches, theme parks, and family-friendly activities as reasons to plan a trip there, but a new report from communications and cloud services provider Broadview Networks adds another potential draw: the highest Internet connection speeds in America.
According to ABC News reporter Alyssa Newcomb, the South Atlantic state that claims to be “for lovers” is home to the fastest broadband connections in the US, followed by Delaware, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Washington DC.
During the first quarter of 2014, Virginia had an average data transfer speed of 13.7 megabits per second (Mbps), the Broadview Networks report said. Delaware and Massachusetts tied for second with speeds of 13.1 Mbps, followed by Rhode Island with 12.9 Mbps, DC with 12.8 Mbps, Washington state with 12.5 Mbps and New Hampshire with 12.3 Mbps.
Alaska had the slowest Internet connections with an average data transfer speed 7 Mbps – less than half that of Virginia’s, according to Newcomb. Arkansas, Kentucky and Montana were only slightly better with 7.3 Mbps connection speeds, followed by West Virginia (7.5 Mbps), Mississippi (7.6 Mbps) and New Mexico (7.6 Mbps).
“Internet speed has been a hot topic in the news as of late, with major providers intentionally throttling speeds and the heated debate surrounding net neutrality,” the company explained. “It isn’t surprising that so many people are interested in the topic. After all, the internet occupies much of an American’s daily life… But we all know that simply having internet access doesn’t cut it – the speed have to be fast and consistent.”
Using data obtained from Akamai’s “State of the Internet” report, the IT company created a color-coded map illustrating the average Internet speeds by state. States appearing green on the map are those with the fastest average connection speeds, and the darker the shade of green, the faster the speed. Those colored in red have the slowest Internet speeds.

The states that tend to have the slowest connection speeds tend to have either lower population numbers, less money, or both, according to HotHardware’s Paul Lilly. Lilly also noted that many of those near the bottom of the list (indicated with darker shades of red) are concentrated in the southern part of the US. Similarly, some of the fastest speeds in the country can be found in the Northeast.
“Nearly every state has shown steady improvement,” said Niraj Chokshi of The Washington Post. “All but two saw speeds accelerate between the last quarter of 2013 and the first quarter of this year, and even in the case of the laggards the declines were a modest four percent slowdown in Virginia and two percent in Louisiana. Only Vermont saw slower speeds in the first quarter than a year earlier.”
The original Akamai report said that 26 of the 50 US states had average speeds topping 10 Mbps, which is categorized as having “high broadband,” said CNET reporter Dara Kerr. Conversely, no states fell within the “low broadband” category of average speeds of less than 4 Mbps. The overall average speed of the US was 10.5 Mbps, good for 10th worldwide but well behind speed leaders South Korea (23.6 Mbps) and Japan (14.6 Mbps), she added.
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