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America the Slow

Akamai, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, tracks Internet speeds across the globe. And although this country may have created the web it's pretty shocking how slow U.S. mobile and broadband connections are compared to the rest of the world.

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In Europe customers’ mobile connections to the web are two to three times faster than they are in the States. In Slovenia the fastest providers offer blazing connections that clock in at speeds twenty times faster than the U.S. average. While some of these numbers may be a bit off, according to analysts, it is clear the U.S. is falling behind both in broadband and mobile connection speeds.

Christian Sandvig, associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, says slow connection speeds are a result of poor policy and are a drag on the American economy and the pace of innovation.

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