THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / Frank Gerardi

A report released by a communication workers' union found that Rhode Island has the fastest average broadband speed of any state.

The report was issued this week by the Communications Workers of America, which represents 700,000 employees in the communications and media fields.

The study compared Internet access speeds in all 50 states and presented the results as evidence that the United States lags behind most other industrial nations. It said that countries such as Japan, South Korea, Finland, Sweden, France and Canada had far faster connections.

The report said that the median download speed of Internet connections in Rhode Island was about 5 megabits-per-second (mbps), and the median upload speed was 1.7 mbps.

(A megabit is about 1 million bits of data, the equivalent of about 131,000 bytes. An Internet connection of 5 mbps would allow downloading a 4-minute song in MP3 format in about 6 seconds.)

Those speeds topped every other state in both categories, the report said.

Rhode Island's download speed was about 2.5 times faster than the national average of 1.97 mbps, and its upload speed was about 4.6 times faster than the national average of 0.371 mbps.

The report itself was not conducted in the way scientific studies and surveys usually are, and therefore may have a large margin of error. The results were obtained from Internet users who found the CWA-run Web site (www.speedmatters.org) and chose to take a test of their Internet speed, and who gave their correct Zip Code.

The Rhode Island figures were based on only 201 speed tests, conducted between September 2006 and May 2007. A total of 80,000 tests were taken nationally over that period, the report said.

There doesn't appear to be any mechanism in place that would prevent the same person or computer from taking the test multiple times. And the report itself says the results probably are skewed by the fact that very few of the tests were taken by people with dial-up modems, which accounts for 30 percent to 40 percent of all Americans with Internet access, according to the report.

However, Rhode Island is unique among states in that a single cable company - Cox Communications - provides high-speed Internet access statewide. It is available in 38 of the 39 municipalities in the state. (Block Island is the only community Cox does not serve in the state.)

Cox's "Preferred" level of Internet access provides speeds of up to 5 mbps, the company says. It recently added a new feature it calls "PowerBoost" which can temporarily increase download speeds up to 10 mbps for that tier of service, if the extra capacity happens to be available at that moment.

The company does not release its customer figures on a state-by-state basis.

Rhode Island also has at least two other companies that provide high-speed Internet access to residential customers.

Verizon Communications launched its fiber-optic Internet access service in parts of the state last year. The company's FiOS Internet service provides connection speeds starting at 5 mpbs, the company says. It is available in Coventry, East Greenwich, West Greenwich, Warwick, West Warwick, North Kingstown and Narragansett.

And Full Channel TV provides high-speed Internet service over its cable television lines in Barrington, Bristol and Warren.

tbarmann@projo.com