A telecom labor union-backed group dubbed
Speed Matters has released their
third annual report on the state of the broadband union. The group, with an obvious interest in increased broadband deployment, has long lamented the fact that the US is only industrialized country without a national policy to promote universal, affordable high speed Internet access. Well, at least for another
176 days, at which point the FCC will unveil our new broadband plan.
The group has logged 413,000 broadband speed tests via their website, and says we're still significantly behind other developed nations. 18% of testers have connections slower than 768 kbps, while 51% of testers have connections between 768 kbps and 6 Mbps. 17% of testers have speeds between 10 Mbps and 25 Mbps, while just 2% of users posted speeds faster than 25 Mbps.
"Between 2007 and 2009, the average download speed in the United States has increased by only 1.6 megabits per second (mbps), from 3.5 mbps in 2007 to 5.1 mbps in 2009," proclaims the report. "At this rate, it will take the United States 15 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in South Korea, the country with the fastest average Internet connections."
Speed Matters also released a
complete breakdown of each state and territory's average broadband speed. Montana (2,322 kbps), Puerto Rico (1,043 kbps), Hawaii (2,968 kbps) and Wyoming (2,598) bring up the rear, while Delaware (9,906 kbps), Rhode Island (9,788 kbps), Massachusetts (8,645 kbps) and New Jersey (8,863 kbps) clock in as the fastest states. Recent reports by Akamai confirm Delaware is the
fastest state in the union, and that the United States has the 33rd fastest average broadband connections in the world.
"The average download speed of U.S. Internet connections is 5.1 megabits per second, significantly below the averages of countries like South Korea (20.1 mbps), Japan (16 mbps) and Sweden (12.7 mbps)," Speed Matters' Alex Kellner tells Broadband Reports. "Only twenty percent of those who took the Speed Matters speed test have Internet speeds in the range of the top ranked countries," notes Kellner, adding that "18 percent of test takers didn’t meet the FCC definition for current-generation broadband."
Last month we noted how
skepticism was mounting about the viability of a new telecom operator by the name of Zer01, who had been getting great press for their plan to offer a VoIP-centric mobile service with unlimited voice and data for $69.95/month. As more people dig into the operator and its seemingly endless army of MLM promotional wizards, the company has started to look increasingly more shady, with
IDG News running a new piece casting yet more doubt on Zer01. The more news outlets dig, the more garbage they find:
Lewis, Hanchey and Teresa Curtis, who served as CFO for Global Verge for a few weeks, all have been involved with multilevel marketing programs that have had legal troubles in the past. Hanchey founded a multilevel marketing company called Lifewave that sells a variety of health products.
story continues..According to a
statement by the FTC, the agency has shut down an ISP named 3FN and/or APS Telecom because it "recruits, knowingly hosts, and actively participates in the distribution of spam, child pornography, and other harmful electronic content." The ISP was operated by another company named Pricewert LLC, and powered more than 15,000 websites. According to the FTC, this is the first time they've ever shuttered the operation of an Internet service provider. "We're very proud, because in one fell swoop we've gone after a big facilitator of some of the utterly worst conduct," new FTC boss Jonathan Leibowitz tells the
Washington Post.
According to security firm
MXLogic, the kind of spam drop seen with the recent
shutdown of McColo wasn't seen here because scam and scumlords have subsequently built redundancy into their networks.
Users in our
security forum have discovered that advertisements delivered via the FoxNews.com website have been using popup malware to force-deliver artificial anti-virus malware onto the PCs of unsuspecting visitors (of which Fox has countless millions). One of our more skilled scambusters and "malvertising" gurus has further dissected (with photos) the exact scumware delivery mechanism at work
here -- and notes that users don't even need to click on an ad banner at the website in order to get infected. The vsm_free_setup.exe forced download the ads are instituting originates from Russia or the Ukraine, and appears to involve a keylogger.
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