Living in New York City, I am fortunate to have fairly fast internet; I think my officially marketed speed is 30mpbs down with real world speeds near 22mbps+. But the rest of the nation isn’t so lucky. Broadband penetration is weak in many areas of the country and, let’s face it, is laughably described as anything over 256kbps. Yes, you read that right… Sad, isn’t it. Still, it generally feels as if most of America is connected in ever increasingly faster connections.

But compared to the rest of the world, we’re way behind. Just skimming a piece off of GigaOM practically brings tears to my eyes. Once the powerhouse of industry, technological ingenuity, and advanced telecommunications systems, we now rank (depending on the stat) 14th, 22nd, or worse – 40th. What’s even more appalling is that the average internet connection actually slowed down! As you can see from the chart below, the US saw a year over year decline in speed of 2.5% of a number that ins’t very good to begin with.

The only stat the US can claim to be number one in is the number of unique IP addresses. But all that means is that we’ve got more people and devices fighting over an abismally slow internet. That is not something to brag about.

The State of the Internet: Now Bigger, Faster & Mobile – GigaOM