Netflix ranking reveals 17 fastest ISPs in America — March 11, 2013

Who better than Netflix to know how fast your ISP is?

After all, the online TV and movie distributor has, on occasion, used up to a third of all bandwidth in North America singlehandedly. And Netflix’s 33 million customers currently stream more than a billion hours of TV and movies every single month.

So the streaming media company has put out a “Netflix ISP Index,” giving you insight into which internet service providers are the fastest.

In the U.S., that list starts with Google, which is running a high-speed fiber experiment in Kansas and sports an average download speed of 3.35 megabits per second. Cox comes in fourth, followed closely by Verizon FIOS, but long-time incumbents AT&T, Time Warner, and ClearWire languish well in the rear:

Google Fiber – 3.35 Mbps
Cablevision – Optimum - 2.35 Mbps
SuddenLink - 2.19 Mbps
Cox - 2.12 Mbps
Verizon-FIOS - 2.10 Mbps
Charter - 2.08 Mbps
Comcast - 2.06 Mbps
Mediacom - 2.04 Mbps
Time Warner Cable - 2.04 Mbps
Bright House - 2.02 Mbps
AT&T U-Verse - 1.91 Mbps
Centurylink - 1.68 Mbps
Windstream - 1.61 Mbps
Frontier - 1.54 Mbps
AT&T DSL - 1.43 Mbps
Verizon DSL - 1.37 Mbps
Clearwire - 1.25 Mbps

The results are average velocity, so peak velocity can be much higher.

They’re useful for choosing an ISP, or negotiating with your current service provider. And, perhaps, from Netflix’ point of view, for shooting a cannon across the bow of ISPs that might be tempted to “packet-shape,” or slow down traffic from media companies that don’t pay extra.

Globally, Netflix members in Finland have the highest average speed, while Mexican Netflix subscribers have the lowest. And all ISPs in Denmark, Sweden and Finland delivered better than a 2Mbps download speed.

You can check your results here.

photo credit: DigiDreamGrafix.com via photopin cc

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