The Impact of Slow Internet

Internet speed is something a lot of us Stevens students take for granted. Unfortunately there a lot of areas in the United States (not to mention around the world) that do not have the same level of internet access. Whenever I go back home to Maine, I am faced with painfully slow speeds. Bloomberg recently produced a video (http://www.bloomberg.com/video/maine-s-slow-internet-service-rivaling-developing-nations-YwOBjDr7S62Th_SVBWbUOQ.html) about Maine’s internet speeds. Bloomberg’s analysts said “Maine’s Slow Internet Service Rivaling Developing Nations”. Maine currently has the 49th worst internet speeds in the country and it is a problem that is not going to be fixed anytime soon.

There is one main reason for the slow internet in Maine. The problem is there are not enough people to make it worthwhile for the internet provides. Places like Maine have very small population densities. It costs internet provides lots of money to expand broadband internet further into Maine. If they spent the money to do this, it would be a long time, if ever, before they saw a return on their investment. Not enough people are living in these places to motivate these companies to improve their services.

This slow internet is a big problem for Maine and other states. Businesses rely heavily on the internet for a lot of day to day activities. Companies are often hesitant to open or expand into places without fast and reliable internet. As a result, Maine has almost no technology firms and not many jobs for Computer Science majors like myself.

Slow internet does not only affect the people experiencing it but also the bottom line of companies around the world. Many people do not have the time or the patience to wait for pages to load and therefore abandon attempts at online shopping. One in every four people abandon a web page if it takes more than four seconds to load. Amazon makes over $67 million in sales online every single day. It is losing millions of dollars every year due to people giving up from slow internet speeds.

KISSmetrics did a survey related to online shopping and how website performance affects shopping habits (https://blog.kissmetrics.com/loading-time/?wide=1). Their results were:

• 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less
• A 1 second delay (or 3 seconds of waiting) decreases customer satisfaction by about 16%
• 52% of online shoppers state that quick page loading is important to their site loyalty

Another study was done to see how internet speeds affected house prices (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/broadband/10671273/Slow-broadband-wipes-20-off-house-prices.html). It found that slow internet speeds can degrade the value of properties by up to 20 percent. Real estate agents have found that buyers will walk away from houses solely due to that fact that super fast speeds are not available at that location. Shockingly, a survey of 3000 people revealed internet speeds were a more important factor than the nearby schools.