Despite Increased Teleworking, Huntsville-area Internet Integrity ‘Among the Best’

West Coast researcher BroadbandNow published a study of the top 200 U.S. cities based on population regarding Internet performance and the numbers say Huntsville is “among the best.’’

That’s according to study author Tyler Cooper, the editor-in-chief at Los Angeles-based BroadbandNow.

“Really, Huntsville’s among the best in terms of the network integrity (recently),’’ Cooper said. “We’ve not found a single week since we started tracking this that Internet performance and either upload or download has actually dropped below what it was in prior weeks of the year – like in January and February, for instance.’’

BroadbandNow decided to do the study since there has been a mass shift of remote Internet usage with the shutdown and stay-at-home orders in most states throughout the country because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’ve seen a huge spike in terms of Internet usage throughout the day,’’ Cooper said. “We wanted to see what is that doing to networks at the national level really because we’re not talking about any specific provider technology here.

“… We’ve seen things ebb and flow. For a few weeks in early to mid-March, we saw a pretty steep drop in many cities where we were showing that many of them were falling out of the range that they were sort of holding within before the pandemic really sat down in the U.S.’’

BroadbandNow’s most recent and previous findings can be found at https://broadbandnow.com/report/internet-speed-analysis-april-5th-11th/.

“(Recently),’’ Cooper said, “we’ve seen those networks start to level off and we’ve seen that many of the connections across the country have actually been slowly improving once more, which has been good to see. Interestingly, Huntsville has been an area that has actually held pretty steady through this entire ordeal in terms of the upload and download performance,’’

Nationwide, here are key findings:

• Internet performance across the top 200 cities continued to improve; 91 (45.5 percent) cities have seen download speed decreases, down from 97 (48.5 percent). Also, 135 cities (67.5 percent) have experienced upload speed decreases, which is once again down from the previous total of 139 (69 percent).
• Median rural download and upload speeds recorded little change from the previous week, remaining below where they were in earlier months of 2020.
• Five cities have recorded upload speed decreases of greater than 40 percent out of range, including Baltimore, Maryland, Beaverton, Oregon, Jamaica, New York, Oxnard, California, and Shreveport, Louisiana.
• Only two cities have experienced significant download speed decreases of greater than 40 percent out of range: Evansville, Indiana and Saint Paul, Minnesota.

BroadbandNow (https://broadbandnow.com) bills itself a champion for consumers in-the-market for broadband internet services. BroadbandNow’s database of providers, the largest in the U.S., delivers the highest-value guides consisting of comprehensive plans, prices and ratings for thousands of internet service providers.

BroadbandNow relentlessly collects and analyzes internet providers’ coverage and availability to provide the most accurate zip code search, so consumers can compare and contrast providers and plans to find the best broadband service.