Ookla, the company behind the popular Speedtest.net website and app, has released their latest report showing which airports are the fastest on both WiFi and cellular connections. Ookla’s reports are based on crowdsourced data from their users. Basically, every time you use the Speedtest.net app to run a speed test, that data is being used in reports just like this. So the data is a bit more accurate, since they don’t have a group of people running around the country taking speed tests on different phones and networks.
In their report, Ookla found that Detroit Metro (DTW) had the fastest cellular speeds in the nation. With their average download speed being 45.79Mbps. That’s a sizable lead over San Francisco (SFO) who came in second place. New York City’s LaGuardia airport came in dead last with an average download speed of 7.25Mbps. Now when it comes to WiFi, Denver (DEN) actually had the fastest speeds, hitting 61.74Mbps on the download side, with Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL) coming in last with a measly 2.71Mbps download speed over WiFi. Quite the difference between the fastest and slowest airports, an even bigger difference on WiFi than on cellular connections.
Ookla also has a nifty map showing the airports included in this test, and which carriers were the fastest. Sprint and T-Mobile each grabbed one airport, Chicago O’Hare and Detroit Metro, respectively. T-Mobile had the fastest speeds of any carrier at any airport, with average speeds of 68.05Mbps download and 21.46Mbps upload.
In this report, Ookla only checked out the top 20 airports by boardings (not passenger numbers, but flights in and out). Which includes a lot of airline hubs, like Delta in Detroit, Atlanta and Seattle; American in Dallas and Chicago O’Hare; United in Houston and Chicago O’Hare, just to name a few. It’s interesting to see the vast difference in speeds between these airports, especially where you have a couple airports at 50Mbps or higher average speeds, and many others can barely pick up 10Mbps. Things have changed since 2015, and they will definitely change once more when the 2017 report comes out this time next year.
