Report: Gigabit Speeds Now Available to 57.5 Million Americans A new report (pdf) by telecom hardware maker Viavi claims that the United States currently has Gigabit broadband available to more people than any other country -- 57.5 million consumers, or 18% of the public. That said, when it comes to the percentage of the country actually covered by such connectivity, top honors goes to Singapore, South Korea, Moldova and Portugal with 95%, 93%, 90% and 64% of their populations covered respectively with gigabit connectivity.

The study also found that California and Chicago top overall gigabit connectivity, with gigabit available to 8.5 million people in California and more than 6 million people in Chicago. Granted hardware vendor studies historically trend toward the optimistic-side of the scale since the companies in question are primarily motivated by selling hardware to ISPs. And in many of these areas the gigabit connections in questions tend to be from Comcast, which is currently only offering a high-end upload speed of 35 Mbps on many of these connections. Still, between deployments by AT&T, Comcast, Google Fiber, Sonic, and numerous municipal broadband providers, the United States is clearly making headway -- even if a lot of this progress is overlooking second or third tier cities and many rural markets. "While the overall picture of the United States' Gigabit health is robust, such a jump in connectivity speed comes with significant delivery challenges," the firm states in a press release. "In particular, service and field technicians need to acquire more complex skills with additional training to be able to test and troubleshoot high-speed connectivity issues, and legacy test instruments can't even measure Gigabit speed. Service providers need to take steps to ensure that their network testing and maintenance practices allow them to follow through on the Gigabit promise." Click on the full graphic below for additional detail.









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Most recommended from 53 comments

existenz

join:2014-02-12 9 recommendations existenz Member Zero in KC? Something wrong with study. There are 5 gigabit providers in KC area and map shows none. Brim77

join:2012-03-16

Lansing, MI 7 recommendations Brim77 Member Biggest reason I bought my house was FTTH. Bought a house in MI this summer. I refused to even look at anything that didn't have fiber. Not playing the waiting game with big telecoms with the hope they would upgrade later on down the line. Now I have gigabit internet and Tv for $80 through Lightspeed and never again have to deal with Comcast or AT&T.

P Ness

You'Ve Forgotten 9-11 Already

Premium Member

join:2001-08-29

way way out 6 recommendations P Ness Premium Member at 60% of US has less then 10mb...... and a single monopoly provider in the area charging an arm and a leg for crappy service, that will not be upgraded anytime soon....at the same price as some Gigabit speed services.



:P silbaco

Premium Member

join:2009-08-03

USA 6 recommendations silbaco Premium Member Gigabit Not very accurate. It goes by residents instead of households which makes no sense at all. It seems to include Comcast's very high price Gigabit service, which is well out of the acceptable price range for most people.



It also seems to ignore small markets. Such as in Iowa, where it only lists 323,000 people as having access to gigabit when really that number is well over 1 million thanks to all the markets Mediacom serves, probably closer to 2 million.

Rob

Premium Member

join:2001-08-25

Miami, FL 3 recommendations Rob Premium Member AT&T Fiber AT&T Fiber is available in my area.. 1000/1000 for $140/mo. x 24 months promo, includes TV. Despite this, I am not switching to it because in the end AT&T has left a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to home based Internet. Not that Comcast is any better, but for the last 10ish years, Comcast has been aggressively upgrading their network and bringing us faster and more reliable Internet whereas AT&T (who acquired Bellsouth) sat on their butts with the old IFITL network.



Not saying that I will never ever switch, but right now, I'm just not feeling AT&T. kherr

Premium Member

join:2000-09-04

Collinsville, IL 3 recommendations kherr Premium Member Looks like a TELCO Pess Release ..... ...... just because a given area within a city is served .... they count the ENTIRE city ..... Don't think the entire city of Chicago has it ocjosh

join:2013-03-19

Anaheim, CA 2 recommendations ocjosh Member LA/OC market Look at the study with big circle on LA OC market in California, I strongly doubt it's that good.



AT&T: Fiber to Press for most of area. Any address I put in for all my friends in LA or OC, not available.

Frontier: They are DSL company, the best they offer for my ex-Verison FIOS is only 300 mbps for over $100.

Charter: They are asking business to sign up but only *100M x 100M =$899/month with 3 year contract.

So this is a lot less gigabit than the report says. elray

join:2000-12-16

Santa Monica, CA 2 recommendations elray Member Garbage... This "report" is a bunch of hooey.



Bill Clinton once tried to defend his impeachment claiming, "it depends on what the meaning of is, is."



In this case, I don't understand why Karl fails to attack the word "available".



In the context of this report "available to 57.5 millions", seems to mean 57.5 million potential ISP customers within the footprint of ISPs who have, or who have promised to order, central office equipment capable of gigabit speeds, not that those 57.5 million can order the service today.



No doubt, they're counting 100,000 of us in Santa Monica, where we have a much-lauded 100Gbit municipal network, available to ... absolutely no one, along with other non-gigabit offerings from Frontier and Charter-Spectrum.