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Longmont's NextLight Offers Businesses, Residents Third Fastest Internet In the U.S.
Ookla finds the third fastest Internet access in the U.S. is located in Longmont, Colorado, reports the Times Call. NextLight, Longmont's gigabit municipal fiber network, is the source of the increase in speeds, driving Longmont's Internet access speeds far beyond any other service in the state.
Ookla clocks average download speed in Longmont as 105 Mbps, which includes all providers in the community. Incumbents Comcast and CenturyLink are dragging down NextLight's average download speed of 221 Mbps. Statewide, Colorado's average is 40 Mbps.
According to the article:
Ookla shows Internet speeds in Longmont shooting up in January and February, when LPC crews began hooking up customers to NextLight in earnest.
NextLight continues to attract residential and business customers. In February, NextLight announced it would be hiring more install crews to meet the high demand for connections. Places without the speed, affordability, and reliability NextLight can offer will find themselves at a disadvantage as economic development increasingly relies on next-generation networks.
The Times Call spoke with Bret McInnis, vice president for information technology for Circle Graphics. The local business switched from CenturyLink to NextLight because it needed better connectivity. Before taking service from NextLight, their maximum capacity connection was 50 Mbps download or upload and it wasn't enough:
Because the images for the canvases use high-resolution photos, they are sent in large files that can range from 100 to 300 megabits in size. The company prints anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 canvases a day during the busy holiday season.
"We've got more bandwith," McInnis said, standing in front of the five tall black towers of computing equipment that make up the business's data center. "So the NextLight fiber feeds right into this and we used to see peaks with CenturyLink ... you would see periods when we were bursting at our capacity."
Switching to NextLight, McInnis said, means employees can download and upload the high-resolution images much more quickly.
Being a Gig City: It's All About the Upload
This is the second in a series of posts examining a premier Gigabit Community - Wilson, North Carolina. The first post is available here.
It's all about the Upload. If you are the owner of a small engineering business with dense blueprints to send to your European clients, or a specialized country doctor who depends on the quick transmission of x-rays, a digital film effects company, a photographer or a local broadcaster, your ability to upload your dense information to your colleagues, clients, and residents means business. For Gig City, Wilson in North Carolina, offering gigabit upload speeds to its community is essential to ensure local businesses thrive.
According to a recent Speed.Net report, upload speeds in the United States compared to the rest of the world are dismal. If you live in Hong Kong (60 Mbps), Singapore (47Mbps) and South Korea (44Mbps), you are in the drivers' seat with the fastest upload speeds in a world where time wasted means money. If you are in the U.S., as of February 2014, you're in the slow lane. We rank 41st at 6.69 Mbps. But not if you live in Wilson. With access to Greenlight's gigabit residential upload speeds, living in Wilson means being competitive and working easily with the world's top achievers.
The owners of Wilson-based Exodus FX know this. Digital artists Brad Kalinoski and Tinatsu Wallace found Wilson in their nearly impossible search for small-town affordability but world-class broadband infrastructure. Two years ago, they started a small growing boutique that caters to the visual effects needs of global film and television production companies. When their broadband rates in West Virginia skyrocketed despite the local broadband infrastructure seriously underperforming, the company's survival depended on relocating.
"We had to choose an area that could offer a low cost of doing business, while delivering an infrastructure better than that of other states and countries," wrote Mr. Kalinoski, a three-time, award nominee for his special effects contributions to Black Swan and LOST, the Final Season.
"We had to choose an area that could offer a low cost of doing business, while delivering an infrastructure better than that of other states and countries," wrote Mr. Kalinoski, a three-time, award nominee for his special effects contributions to Black Swan and LOST, the Final Season.