Average U.S. Internet Speeds Over Time

The internet helps us keep abreast of local and world news and stay connected with old friends and distant relatives. It’s also a way to meet and bond with new people during intense video game sessions. Or just to relax with our favorite guilty pleasure on a streaming service. However, many of us are completely dependent on business internet service for our employment. We rely on it to manage and track virtually all aspects of our lives, from finance, to health, to ecommerce. The internet as we know it has been around fewer than 35 years, and it has only become ingrained in our day-to-day lives at this level for a fraction of that time. With that in mind, the Ooma research team decided to take a look at the short history of internet speeds and the rate at which they have improved.

Internet speeds in the 1990s

When the World Wide Web became publicly accessible in 1993, the data speed of the fastest available modem was 14.4 kilobits per second (Kb/s). Users connected to the internet via their phone lines. It would have taken a very long time to download video content, and it was very common for computers to fail to load websites with anything but a basic design.

It may be hard to believe, but Google was not launched until 1997. Prior to then, users would fire up Yahoo in the Netscape Navigator browser to find information. Here is how long it would have taken to download an image, an MP3 and a full movie in 1993:

Note: The listed sizes do not account for compression standards from the ‘90s.

Broadband speed

The first major surge in internet speed was when broadband service launched in March 2000. By the end of that year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)  

The increasing availability of faster internet speeds led to the rise in popularity of downloading, and even streaming, music. What had previously taken well over 10 minutes was shaved down to a small fraction of the time. The shift paved the way for platforms like iTunes, Napster, and eventually Spotify to change the way people listened to music.

Here is how long it would have taken to download an image, an MP3 file and a full movie at 127 Kb/s in 2000:

High-speed internet in the 2000s

The launch of YouTube in December 2005 increased the demand for high-speed internet access. As the video streaming website gained popularity, anything below 1 megabits per second (Mg/s) would cause significant buffering. It became common for countries to adopt policies that would provide high-speed internet access at an affordable cost to all residents. In fact, by 2009, the United States was one of the only countries that did not have such a policy. As a result, its internet speeds paled compared to those in South Korea and many other nations.

Here is how long it would have taken to download an image, an MP3 file and a full movie at 7.12 Mb/s in 2009:

Current internet speeds

By 2010, internet speeds had increased tenfold, and they continue on a rapid upward trajectory even today. In 2020, much of the world’s workforce went remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and employees needed to upgrade their internet packages to accomplish tasks at home that they were previously only expected to do at the office.

In 2025, here is how long it should take to download an image, an MP3 file and a full movie at 214 Mb/s:

It should be noted, however, that many countries offer only a fraction of this speed, and some countries do not have internet access at all.

Why doesn’t the United States have the highest internet speeds?

The United States still lacks the speed of the internet seen in countries like Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, and a significant reason for this is that the U.S. is larger in area than those countries. Singapore is 284.1 square miles and the U.A.E. is 32,300 square miles. In contrast, the U.S. is nearly 3.8 million square miles. Providing efficient internet service across that amount of space, especially in rural areas, is very complicated.

The future of high-speed internet access

By 2050, it is expected that through the use of satellites, most of the world will have access to the internet. It is also likely that users with the most sophisticated equipment will be able to download a terabyte of data in just a few seconds, thanks to the increasing use of fiber-optic cables instead of coaxial cables.

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Average U.S. internet speeds by year

Sources:

Federal Communications Commission (transition.fcc.gov)

GWS Media (gwsmedia.com/articles/how-internet-system-requirements-have-changed)

All Connect (allconnect.com/blog/internet-speeds-over-time)

Future Timeline (futuretimeline.net/data-trends/2050-future-internet-speed-predictions.htm)

CNET (cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/u-s-broadband-speeds-rise-in-2009)

Pingdom (pingdom.com/blog/the-web-in-1996-1997)

Xah Lee (xahlee.info/comp/bandwidth.html)

thinkbroadband (thinkbroadband.com/news/946-top-10-fastest-broadband-isps-for-december-2002)

Comscore (comscore.com/Insights/Press-Releases/2004/04/National-Average-Download-Speeds)

Network World (networkworld.com/article/745244/cisco-subnet-cisco-study-more-users-more-devices-more-connections.html)

HighSpeedInternet.com (highspeedinternet.com/resources/internet-facts-statistics)