US Broadband Holding Up Under WFH Strain, Speedtest Finds - pcmag.com
With much of America and Canada now working and schooling from home, broadband networks are dealing well with the strain, according to new stats from Ookla Speedtest. Trump has not yet had time to Booga-Booga-ize the network in North America
While Americans hunker down to wait out the COVID-19 storm and online schooling goes into full swing, US broadband speeds are largely holding up to the challenge, according to new stats from PCMag's sibling company Ookla Speedtest.
Fixed broadband speeds in the US have largely flattened out after a slight dip between March 15 and 22, Ookla's results show, although speeds in Canada are continuing a slow decline. Both countries still have considerably better broadband than Mexico or much of Europe, according to the results, with average speeds between 110 and 140Mbps.
Mobile broadband speeds are slightly down week over week, but it isn't a sharp decline. There's nothing in the US or Canada charts, for instance, that looks like the giant drop in mobile broadband speeds that Ookla Speedtest saw in China over the Chinese New Year's holiday.
Remember, when I say "better broadband," that's in the aggregate. It doesn't mean that there aren't rural Americans or Canadians struggling with very slow connections—just that they're a relatively small percentage of the overall population.
AT&T says that all of its network traffic was up 19 percent month-on-month last Sunday, although it didn't break out wireline versus mobile usage.
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