Speedtest Produces Guide to Best Airport Download Speeds
Jennifer Billock January 20, 2017
Downloading some shows before your flight? Head to one of these airports with faster download speeds.
Thanks to Speedtest by Ookla, a company specializing in technology that tests broadband speeds, travelers everywhere now have a guide on which airport will let them download shows for flights the fastest. The company recently released a report ranking the top 20 U.S. airports on upload and download speed – and found some surprising results.
According to report data, the speeds vary widely from airport to airport. Ookla looked at the top four cellphone services in the country – AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint – and investigated the speeds based on using cellular data or airport wi-fi.
On the cellular data front, the fastest download speeds are at Detroit Metropolitan Airport (DTW), clocking in at 45.79 Mbps. LaGuardia Airport (LGA) tanked here, with the lowest download speed on the list, hitting only 7.25 Mbps. For reference, the nationwide average download speed on cellular data is 21.77 Mbps.
Using airport wifi drastically changed those numbers. Here, the top download speed went to Denver International Airport (DEN) at an average of 61.74. Last on this list was Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport (ATL), clocking in at a dismal 2.71 Mbps.
Ookla pointed out in the report (which only covered the last three months of 2016) that the choice between using wi-fi and data may seem easy – why use up data if you don’t have to? – but if you really want the fastest speed, it can be a mixed bag.
“You might think cell signals are a lot faster than Wi-Fi,” the report said. “Our data shows that when it comes to airports, it’s impossible to guess which type of connection will be faster until you’ve actually arrived.”
[Photo: Shutterstock]
I don't like babies in any class. Children under the age of two derive no benefits from travel, they're far too young to remember the experience. Usually, they're just life accessories from parental units who have not yet made the adjustment from carefree single people to responsible adults who have the burden of making sure their offspring are raised correctly. They're often of the attitude that the village will help raise them, and they seem to think that they're the only ones who have reproduced, and therefore, the rest of us own them a mighty thanks for that. That said, I realize that dopey, er, doting parents will insist on dragging the kids with them everywhere they go, and that's why we have first class, to get away from the people who are content to cram into a cattle car just for the privilege of seeing other's screaming brats at cartoon theme parks. I'd gladly switch 100% of my business to an airline that offered child-free flights. We have senior citizen communities where people over 55 can live in peace and quiet, why not airline flights for this purpose?
For the mobile data speeds, is that only the fastest carrier or the average of all of them?