Yahoo! News has a good story today about Internet access speeds, and the news is no surprise. In spite of millions of dollars of slick advertising and cartoon characters, we’re still slow in this country. This line sums it up best. “When it comes to Internet performance, in the aggregate, none of us are exactly living it up. The fastest throughput in America clocks in, on average, at a measly 1.22Mbps.”
These figures include the cable giants who are charging you big bucks for “blazing” speeds and such.
Greenlight’s slowest residential speed is 10Mbps upload and download. Why is Greenlight different? The network is all fiber optics, plus we serve a smaller area. Most of the cable companies, including the one with the most customers in NC, rely on old copper lines that simply can’t carry the same speeds as fiber optic networks. PC Mag recently said, “Those results are clear: fiber-to-the-home is the way to go nationwide…”
Wilson invested in its own network, and other NC cities and towns deserve the same chance. If they’re forced to wait on the outdated cable and telecom companies, the US will continue to lag behind other developed countries.
Filed under: Standard | Tagged: broadband, cable, fiber, fiber optic, greenlight, legislature, nc, north carolna, speed, wilson |
Save NC Broadband.com 
Off-topic but I’m not sure where else to ask: how does Wilson get its bandwidth from Raleigh (where I see you guys have Level3) and Ashburn (where y’all have a connection to PCCW) to Wilson itself? I’m guessing you lease dark fiber or maybe lit transport from point A to point B, but wo’s the provider? I’m guessing Level3, but there’s probably a regional net I don’t know of…DukeNet doesn’t make it to WIlson, right?
The UK is facing the same problems as the US. Speeds are also much slower in rural areas. Incredibly in a report by Cisco yesterday South Korea came top in a comparison ofworldwide internet infrastructure and preparedness. Poor infrastructure will surley impact on economic competiveness. There must be more investment in fibre optics.