Iowa claims the US broadband speed crown

While 105MBPS won’t get headlines in much of western Europe, Japan or Korea, it’s a glimmer of hope in bandwidth starved America. Waterloo Iowa now leads the US, shaming the major cites that continue to languish with DSL and old DOCSIS speeds that are pretty much the same as they were a decade ago.

The Courier article quotes a Mediacom exec on the reason for picking Waterloo. “First of all, the physical network in place is very robust,” he said. “It is in great shape, and we know that the product will perform well from a technical side… We also wanted to select Waterloo as indicative of a typical Midwest community. We had heard that the business community was questioning whether Waterloo was keeping pace. …We think this says Waterloo is keeping pace.”

It was certainly sporting of a company like Mediacom to care about the feelings of Waterloo’s business community, but the city might also have been chosen for other reasons. Waterloo is contiguous with Cedar Falls, which houses the University of Northern Iowa and also features a city-owned cable and Internet operation. (ARS Technica)

Meanwhile back in Washington the feds are contracting out more broadband maps….and building nothing.