How is the Internet Market in Connecticut?

In the south of the New England region, Connecticut mixes rural and coast cities.

You have, for example, New Heaven, the city where you will find the worldwide famous University of Yale, one of the best on Earth.

In Mystic you have the Seaport Museum, where you can find 500 years old ships, or the Aquarium, with all types of fish and ocean animals you can imagine.

The state is 10th at the national broadband access ranking, and has an average download speed of 172 Mbps state-wide.

The good news is that almost everyone in Connecticut (actually, 99% of its population) have access to speeds of 100 Mbps or higher. The bad news is that fiber is only available for 4% of Connecticutians.

If you are looking for a new internet, only 30% of plans available in the state cost less than $ 60 per month. The average rating for the Unites States are of 51% of low-priced alternatives available.

In general, the state is well connected, with 98,9% of its population having access at least to cable connections.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection has received almost $ 3,800,000 from the federal government directed to broadband mapping and data development, since 2010.

The e Connecticut Department of Information Technology also has been awarded almost $ 100 million to invest in infrastructure for the internet services.

Another interesting thing about Connecticut is that the state has the oldest newspaper still alive today: the Connecticut Courant, now called Hartford Courant. It has been published since 1974, made in Hartford.

Speaking in Hartford, the city has one of the best internet coverages in the state. So, why not take a deeper look at the city, its main attractions and, of course, its broadband details.

The state capital is in the center of the River Valley region.

As the name indicates, there are lots of river activities you can enjoy, like fishing, riding a boat or exploring waterfalls and lakes.

At the River Valley region you will find the Mystic Aquarium, where you can see penguins, fishes and others.

Actually, after the COVID pandemic, many museums are offering virtual tours, lives, interactive campaigns and even mini games.

The Aquarium is one of them. Also, the Zoo, The Children’s Museum, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, The Glass House, the Palestine Museum U.S., and the Yale University Art Gallery.

You can see a list of those online experiences at the Connecticut official government website. But, in order to enjoy them, you will need some internet.

So, let’s get back to business and take a look at the broadband coverage in the state.

As for many of the cities in Connecticut, fiber internet is rare. There is only one Internet Service Provider (IPS) that offers this technology, GoNetspeed, but is only available for a little over 6% of Hartford addresses.

The city does not have many options for fast internet. Just GoNetspeed and Xfinity, but this second one does not have fiber plans.

The state capital is only the 30th most connected city in Connecticut, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

There are a total of 19 internet providers in the city and only around 5 thousand people (about 4% of its population) have access only to one provider.

The average download speed in Hartford is 250 Mbps, half of New York, for example, but 100 Mbps faster than Los Angeles.

There are 17 Internet providers in New Haven, one of the most important cities in Connecticut.

If fiber internet is available only in 6% regarding Connecticut in general, for New Haven the number goes up to 27% ---which is still pretty low, but is much better than other cities in the state.

Much of it thanks to GoNetspeed coverage, which is available four times more in this city than in the state capital, for example.

Xfinity is also more available in New Haven than Hartford. Those two are, also, the only alternatives for very fast internet in the city, but only one of them has fiber.

Although Xfinity offers a bigger maximum download speed (1.200 Mbps against 1.000 Mbps), when it comes to upload, it only gets as fast as 35 Mbps.

GoNetspeed has up to 1.000 Mbps upload speed, because fiber technology is the only that can provide identical upload and download speed ---and Xfinity does not offer it.

New Haven has a very good coverage overall, with 98% of its addresses having at least two different providers to choose from.

The city is also called “The Elm City”, because it made the first public tree planting program in the United States (and included a very large number of elms, therefore, this nickname).

New Haven is below Hartford, being the 31th most connected city in the state, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

The city is located at the coast of the United States, in the Greater New Haven region, where you will also find, for example, the University of Yale.

Greater New Haven is also the birthplace of one of the most traditional and worldwide famous american foods, one that has become almost a brand for the american way of life and the country trademark: hamburguers.

New Haven itself served as capital of the state from 1701 until 1873, before the government got transferred to Hartford, a more central city.

Within minutes of car travel from New Haven, you can find beautiful beaches.

The city does not have a top professional team as for today, but not many people know that it was once home to the four time Super Bowl champions, New York Giants of the NFL (National FootballLeague).

It happened during a short period, though, between 1973 and 1974. The city is connected to New York City by rails, so many Giants fans live in New Haven until today.

Bridgeport is one of the cities in Connecticut that has an interesting selection of Internet Services Providers.

Meanwhile most of the cities in the state have Xfinity as its biggest provider, the company does not operate in Bridgeport.

The gap is filled (and with class) by Optimum. It offers customers a service very like Xfinity. It has no fiber service, which is bad, but it is broadly available for over 90% of the addresses in the state and also has a hybrid connection of cable and fiber that can get to gigabit internet speeds (1,000 megabits per second).

As the other cities we have seen before, the only fiber alternative is GoNetspeed. Compared to other places, it has an average availability of 15.8%, which is still very little if you compare it to other providers, such as Visasat and HudgesNet.

But while those two are available everywhere, they only offer download speeds up to 25 Mbps and 50 Mbps, respectively, the GoNetspeed can give you not only 1000 Mbps download speed, but the same upload speed (and identical download and upload speed are only possible with fiber technology).

In Bridgeport, almost 6% of the population has only one option of provider to choose, which is a pretty bad rate compared to other bi cities, where around 98% of the addresses have at least two alternatives.

In total, there are 18 Internet Services Providers (ISP) in the city, but only 7 of those offer residential services.

The county where Bridgeport is located, Fairfield County has approximately 9,000 people who live without access to internet faster than 25 Mbps, and 3,000 who do not have access to wired connections at all.