According to broadband speed and service tracker BroadbandNow, in six of the top 10 most populous cities the broadband infrastructure appears to be handling the added load of telecommuting in the age of COVID-19. And in Seattle, considered one of the centers of the virus, broadband speeds are actually up.
The bad news in the new report is that New York, the most populous city and in the state with the most cases of the virus, has seen some degradation of median speeds in the March 15 week to date versus the previous 11 weeks (see chart), as have San Diego and San Jose (California is also one of the states with the most cases) and Houston.
But even in those cities, BroadbandNow said, none of the median speeds has dropped such that "the results indicate networks being at risk of not supporting common work-from-home applications, as of yet."
The analysis was based on "raw speed test data from MLabs for the top 10 cities by population in the U.S."
