A new speed analysis published by Ookla finds that municipal broadband providers consistently leave their private Internet service provider (ISP) competition in the dust.

“Small Towns, Big Speeds: How Some Municipal Broadband Providers Outperform Their ISP Peers” examined speed test data that included some of the largest municipal networks in the U.S. from December 2024 through December 2025 and compared their performance to each other and to their privately-owned ISP competitors.

Though it wasn’t in-depth study on other aspects of performance (or business models) – but a more narrowly-focused comparison of speed among 14 municipal providers – still the analysis shines a light on a leading performance indicator: “eight municipal providers in the U.S. that we monitored using Ookla Speedtest data beat their broadband competitors in median upload speeds and one municipal provider, Sherwood Broadband, outpaced the competition in median download speeds.”

Here are some of the report’s topline takeaways:

• Fort Collins, Colorado’s Connexion was the leader in median upload speed, delivering an average median upload speed of more than 300 (Megabits per second) Mbps for the entire 13-month period from December 2024 to December 2025.
• Sherwood Broadband in Sherwood, Oregon, was the top provider in median download speeds, delivering an average median download speed that surpassed 400 Mbps eight months out of a 13-month period from December 2024 to December 2025.
• UTOPIA Fiber in Utah is a standout in latency, delivering the lowest latency of all 14 municipal broadband providers with a multi-server latency consistently in the low 6 milliseconds (ms) to 8 ms range.

The Problem With 'Unfair Competition'

The American Prospect recently published an analysis – "How Monopolies and Maps Are Killing ‘Internet for All’" – authored by our own Sean Gonsalves that lays out why the federally-backed “Internet For All” initiative will likely fall short of its aspirational goals.

It begins with facts-on-the-ground reporting about the estimated 37,000 households that do not have high-quality access to the Internet in Oakland, California and how cities across the nation are plagued with similar challenges – challenges many digital advocates say is “digital redlining.”

Here's a few excerpts:

“It would be reasonable to think the Biden administration’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law, passed by Congress in November 2021, would change all of this. A significant part of the law devotes $65 billion to a moon shot mission, involving all 50 states and U.S. territories, to bridge the digital divide once and for all. It includes funding to build new modern networks, and other programs to address barriers to broadband adoption, like the Affordable Connectivity Program, which helps eligible low-income households pay for pricey internet bills, as well as initiatives that offer digital skills training and a mandate for the FCC to adopt rules ‘to prevent and eliminate digital discrimination.’”

“Similar to when the federal government set out to bring electricity to every household in America a century ago, the Biden administration intends to do the same with broadband, labeling this historic investment the ‘Internet for All’ initiative.”

“But what hasn’t dawned on most federal and state lawmakers—or at least, it has not been admitted publicly—is that the trajectory we are on will not lead to Internet for All, but something more like Internet for Some.”

You can read the entire story on the American Prospect website here.