Cox Communications has knocked Verizon off its long-held perch as the fastest provider of fixed broadband internet in the U.S.
Verizon had placed No. 1 in the quarterly Ookla Speedtest Intelligence ranking of fixed ISP download speeds since the beginning of 2020. But privately owned cable company Cox, delivering a download pace of 197.73 megabits per second, finished first in the second quarter.
Verizon (171.01 Mbps) fell to fourth place, behind Comcast (184.08 Mbps) and Charter Communications (183.74 Mbps).
There's one important caveat here: Ookla compiles its rankings based on customer-run queries on its Speedtest.net platform, and the company just switched its ranking currency from the "mean" to the "median."
"We implemented this change to more accurately represent the typical performance that consumers actually experience on a network," an Ookla rep told CNET.
Notably, Cox ranked No. 6 on a list of the fastest uploaded speeds for fixed providers at 10.6 Mpbs. Verizon ranked second at 112.36, followed by first-place finisher Frontier (113.21 Mpbs).
Verizon did still rank as the top fixed ISP provider in terms of latency, and Verizon and Cox finished Nos. 1 and 2 in regard to how their networks handle streaming video.
In terms of regional rankings, Charter Spectrum ranked as the fasters fixed ISP in California, delivering a median download speed of 168.91 Mbps. Verizon ranked No. 1 in New York at 177.45.
The city with the fastest internet in America? That would be Gilbert, Arizona, which had a median download speed of 253.21 Mbps in Q2.
