Say good-bye to Internet’s narrowband yesterday of modems when a great connection could bring you the Internet at up to a breath-taking 53.6Kbps (Kilobits per second). Today, only 3 percent of U.S. Internet users are stuck at dial-up speeds. Better still, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project reports that “As of May 2013, 70 percent of American adults ages 18 and older have a high-speed broadband connection at home.”

That’s 4 percent better than April 2012, but don’t get ready to throw a party quite yet. Both Pew and the FCC define broadband as being 4Mbps (Megabits per second) down and 1Mbps up. According to the Akamai State of the Internet report for the first quarter of 2013, the United States’ average broadband speed is only 8.6Mbps (PDF Link).

Not fast enough, not broad enough: The US Internet in 2013. More >