Over the past two weeks, I have been complaining to my Internet service provider about the sudden slowdown in my service; instead of the advertised 25-megabits-per-second download speeds, I was reaching anywhere from 1 to 3 Mbps. My load times for YouTube videos have been longer than the video lengths themselves, and I don’t even try to view pictures on Facebook anymore.

As a result, I have been spending a lot of time using the computers in Grainger. Out of curiosity, I tested the speed of the Internet on the Grainger computers to compare how much faster the University network was than the Internet in my apartment. Not surprisingly, it was almost 100 times faster, reaching download speeds of 170 Mbps. It is no wonder the University is ranked 12th for the fastest average Internet speed in the United States.

However, despite this hometown advantage, the United States ranks far behind many other developed countries in terms of average Internet speed. In fact, far from making even the top 10, the U.S. is ranked 34th in the world with an average Internet speed of 15 Mbps. Not only that, Americans on average pay much more for their slower Internet speeds. For the same speed of 100 Mbps per second, residents of cities such as Washington and New York City pay $105 and $159.95 per month, respectively, compared with major cities in other countries such as Paris and Berlin, who only pay $40 per month.

The problem lies with the ISPs in the United States; backed by the government, ISPs like AT&T and Comcast have essentially divided the country into different fiefs where they become the sole suppliers of Internet. Through this regionalized monopoly, American ISPs have become content with providing lower speeds at higher costs because of the lack of alternative options. Instead of investing in faster fiber optic technology, which can potentially host bandwidths up to 8 gigabits per second, telecommunication companies stick with providing service through the aging cable network, which can only host bandwidths up to 30 Mbps, more than 200 times slower.

Time Warner Cable’s chief technology officer Irene Esteves was recently quoted saying that Time Warner doesn’t plan on building a fiber optic network for American homes because there’s no evidence that Americans want faster Internet. The reality is that Americans have never known they had the choice.

However, there is still hope for Americans looking for faster Internet. Recently, as an attempted wake-up call to ISPs, software giant Google launched a fiber optic network in Kansas City, Mo., offering Internet with download speeds up to 1 Gbps for only $70 a month. Some communities, such as Chattanooga, Tenn., have also taken it upon themselves to generate other options and built local gigabit speed networks for consumer use.

But until companies like Time Warner get the message, the rest of the country will have to wait.

Brian is a junior in Engineering and can be reached at [email protected].