Things are slower in the South -- even on the Internet

PCmag gathered 200,000 speed tests from 17,000 users, coupled it with some other broadband penetration data and analyzed the numbers. They've mashed the data it various ways, including a ranking of states by Internet access speed.

The analysis did find Internet speeds on average are slightly slower in the Southern region than the rest of the country. And both speed and availability rank lower in rural areas, which the South has lots of. See the PCmag results.

Results for Tennessee were not stellar, with a ranking as the state with only the 35th fastest Internet access. Border state Virginia was No. 2! And based on the user satisfaction percent, Tennesseans know it.

Tennessee
Population: 6,156,719
Area: 42,143 square miles
Average speed: 474 Kbps
SurfSpeed rank: 35th
Satisfied users: 33 percent
Median monthly price of broadband: $39
Broadband penetration 48.9 percent
Sitting right above Louisiana--in our SurfSpeed ranking, that is--Tennessee ranked 35th with an average speed of 474 Kbps. User satisfaction was similar to the Bayou State's as well, with only a third of users claiming satisfaction with their sluggish surfing speeds. Perhaps it's Charter's local service, which proved itself a hound dog at just 240 Kbps.