FCC survey of home and mobile connectivity -- most people don't know their connection speed, but they are satisfied

An FCC study shows that 80% of US home users do not know their Internet download speed. This is nearly unchanged from the 2006 Pew Internet study on Home Broadband Adoption.

Breaking the FCC survey down, men and young people are more likely to know their home download speed than women and older people:

• 71% of men do not know their speed.
• 90% of women do not know their speed.
• 73% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 do not know their speed.
• 88% of people age 65 do not know their speed.

There were somewhat less pronounced differences among different races and income groups.

The survey also inquired as to satisfaction with both home broadband and mobile Internet speeds:

• 50% of home broadband users are very satisfied.
• 41% of home broadband users are somewhat satisfied.
• 33% of mobile users are very satisfied.
• 38% of mobile users are somewhat satisfied.

Regardless of how you slice it, most people do not know how fast their Internet connections are and most people are satisfied with their connectivity, though mobile users are less satisfied than home users.

An important caveat is that they are satisfied with respect to the applications they now use. Would an email and Web surfing user be satisfied if they started uploading videos to YouTube, watching hi-definition movies or sporting events, playing multi-player games or holding family meetings over the Internet?

Do you know your connection speed? Are you satisfied with it? Going beyond your individual need for speed, how might society benefit from higher speeds?