San Francisco and neighboring Silicon Valley are the undisputed tech capitals of the world. So we should have some of the world's fastest, most reliable Internet, right? Actually, the situation is nearly the opposite. According to the Open Technology Institute's Cost of Connectivity study, San Francisco ranks near the bottom for Internet connections among the 24 cities across North America, Asia, and Europe included in the study. The report compared the cities based on download speed and put San Francisco way down in 20th place, behind Asian powerhouses like Seoul and Hong Kong but also behind Chattanooga, Tennessee; Riga, Latvia; and our American big-city counterparts like Los Angeles and New York.

The study also examined the cost of Internet across all of the cities included. In this case, San Francisco actually did pretty well. The fastest service here, which offers top download speeds of 200 megabits per second (mbps), can be purchased for just $30 per month from Webpass. In contrast, places like New York and LA, which have 500 mbps service, charge about $300 for that speed. However, we're still not even close to the speed-for-cost of Seoul, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. All of those cities get download speeds of one-gigabit (1,000 mbps) for prices of between $30 and $40. Chattanooga and Kansas City also have one-gigabit connections available for just $70 a month.

· The Cost of Connectivity [Open Technology Institute]

· LA Has Some of the Slowest, Most Expensive Internet on Earth [Curbed LA]