SEATTLE — Fixed broadband customers have seen the biggest jump in performance with download speeds achieving an average of over 50 Mbps for the first time ever, according to new data from Speedtest Market Report from Ookla, a provider of broadband testing and web-based network diagnostic applications. This improvement is more than a 40 percent increase since July 2015. Overall, the fixed broadband industry has seen consolidation, speed upgrades and, thankfully, growth in fiber optic deployments from upstarts like Google Fiber to industry titans like XFINITY and AT&T to other regional Internet service providers.

Mobile Internet customers have also seen performance gains, improving by more than 30 percent since last year with an average download speed of 19.27 Mbps in the first six months of 2016. The four major mobile carriers—Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint—are in a tight race for fastest download speeds. All four are also aggressively competing on price to attract new subscribers.

While competition has created faster speeds, the Internet in the U.S. could still improve. The U.S. still lags from an international perspective, currently ranking twentieth in fixed broadband and forty-second in mobile Internet performance globally.