A new government study has found that broadband speeds in the US are getting closer to what major Internet service providers (ISPs) promise.
The study carried out by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considered cable, DSL and fiber-to-the-home services at 13 top U.S. broadband providers. It found a that broadband speeds on average are within 80% of what major ISPs advertise.
The FCC calls it a significant improvement from two years ago, according to a Reuters report.
In 2009, download speeds were found to be half of what ISPs promised.
The agency said that while Verizon topped the list at meeting or exceeding advertised maximum download speeds, Cablevision Systems fared the worst in the study.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski was quoted by Reuters, "Most major ISPs are providing service close to what they’re advertising. This represents a significant improvement over the findings from two years ago when we first shined a light on this issue."
However, a recent report released by UK telecom regulator Ofcom had said that broadband speed in the UK is not fast enough as advertised by the service providers.
The data from Ofcom revealed that almost half of broadband users are now on packages with advertised speeds above 10Mbps but few customers receive the advertised speed.
Data showed the broadband speed in the UK has increased 10% around the country in the six months ending May, reaching 6.8 megabits per second (Mbps) compared with 6.2Mbps in November 2010 while the average advertised speed by the operators was 15Mbps.
The Ofcom study also found that more than a third of customers on services advertised as "up to" 24Mbps actually received speeds of 4Mbps or less.
