By Mike Rogoway & Mark Graves | The Oregonian/OregonLive

Even as CenturyLink rolls out hyperfast Internet speeds in some Portland neighborhoods speeds remain painfully slow in many others, according to a new analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

CenturyLink's speeds are all over the map: In some areas households can choose 1 gigabit per second, 40 times faster than the new federal standard for "broadband" service.

In other areas, CenturyLink's fastest download speed available is just 1.5 megabits per second. That's nearly worthless for streaming video, online chatting and many other standard functions of the contemporary Internet.

(Check the top speeds available at your own home at CenturyLink's website.)

CenturyLink is working to reduce its reliance on its rapidly fading landline phone business, shifting its emphasis to Internet services. It's in the process of stringing high-capacity fiber-optic cables to select neighborhoods in Portland, Vancouver and other suburbs. It's also preparing to offer Internet-based cable TV in some areas.

But CenturyLink hasn't announced which neighborhoods are getting upgrades, or its timetable for completing the work. To date, gigabit service is only available to parts of inner Southeast Portland and a handful of apartment buildings elsewhere.

(CenturyLink serves Portland, Vancouver and Lake Oswego. It does not serve Gresham or most of Washington County, which is in Frontier Communications' territory. Frontier already has fiber lines in most of its local service area, though it's just begun offering gigabit connections in a few areas.)

The Oregonian/OregonLive randomly selected more than 700 Portland addresses and searched CenturyLink's website to check the maximum speed available at each one.

The resulting map shows pockets of slow Internet connections in various parts of the city, with no tight relation to neighborhood income level. Indeed, some of CenturyLink's fastest speeds - 20 to 40 megabits per second - are available in less affluent areas of outer Southeast Portland.

CenturyLink declined to comment on its highly variable speeds, but they could result from older networking equipment that hasn't been upgraded or homes that happen to be an unusually great distance from a CenturyLink central office. Distance degrades DSL Internet connections.

Residents living in areas with slow CenturyLink connections have another option, of course: Comcast, which serves nearly the entire Portland metro area.

The cable company doubled its connection speeds last fall, and its standard downloads now run 50 to 105 Mbps. That's slower than CenturyLink's top-end service, but still plenty adequate for nearly all residential Internet demand.

In areas where CenturyLink does offer speeds that fast, its prices are generally competitive with Comcast's - $50 a month for 100 Mbps service, provided customers also subscribe to a home phone service. Comcast charges about $54 a month for downloads up to 50 Mbps service, provided customers also subscribe phone or cable TV service.

CenturyLink's highly variable speeds underscore the necessity of bringing more competition to the Portland market, said Mary Beth Henry, the city's director of community technology.

"With one provider that means you're likely to have, actually, slower speeds at higher prices," she said.

Portland has been working for more than a decade to lure a company to offer competitive Internet and cable TV service to the market.

Google Fiber said a year ago that Portland was on its shortlist of expansion targets, but announced in January that it has postponed a decision until later this year.

For now, Henry said, CenturyLink is Portland's best competitive option.

"They are beginning to upgrade, so I guess that's the good news," Henry said. "I think Google played a major role in spurring this upgrade."

Oregonian editor Steve Suo contributed to this report.

-- Mark Graves

-- Mike Rogoway

mrogoway@oregonian.com

503-294-7699

@rogoway