The United States has not made significant improvement in the speeds at which residents connect to the Internet in the last year.

So says a new report from the Communications Workers of America.

Between May 2007 and May 2008, nearly 230,000 people in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico – most of them with broadband connections – have gone to CWA’s “Speedmatters” web site to take an Internet speed test and measure how fast their computers can upload and download data.

The results of this second annual CWA national survey of actual Internet speeds shows just how far the U.S. continues to lag behind other countries.

The median download speed for the nation was 2.3 megabits per second (mbps). Compare that to Japan, where the median download speed is 63 mbps, or 30 times faster than the U.S. The U.S. also trails South Korea at 49 mbps, Finland at 21 mbps, France at 17 mbps, and Canada at 7.6 mbps.

Put another, less technical way, the same data that scoots around the Internet at the equivalent of a highway speed of about 60 MPH in Japan pokes along at a backing-out-of-the-driveway speed of about 2 MPH in the United States. For South Korea it would be 49 MPH. At about 8 MPH in our example, data in Canada isn’t exactly flying down the Information Highway – but that’s still nearly four times faster than the U.S. speed.

So what does that mean in practical terms? The answer is pretty startling.

For example, a movie that can be downloaded in Japan in about two half minutes on average will take about two hours in the United States – even though the cost of Internet service is about the same in both countries.

Just as importantly, upload speeds in the U.S. are a lot like that little old person driving along in the left lane with the turn signal on.

The median upload speed from Speedmatters test was just 435 kilobits per second (kbps), far too slow for patient monitoring or to transmit large files such as medical records, according to CWA.

The results of the 2008 speed test show little progress over last year. The 2007 results showed the median download speed for the 50 states and the District of Columbia was 1.9 megabits per second and the median upload speed was 371 kbps.

In other words, between 2007 and 2008, the median download speed increased by only four-tenths of a megabit per second (from 1.9 mbps to 2.3 mbps), and the median upload speed barely changed (from 371 to 435 kbps).

At this rate, it will take the United States more than 100 years to catch up with current Internet speeds in Japan.

As bad as those numbers look, it appears they don’t accurately reflect how slow it really is for American web surfers as a whole.

Most people who went to Speedmatters to take the speed test used a DSL connection, a cable modem, or a fiber connection.

Very few people with a dial-up connection even took the test because it would have taken too long, according to CWA. But about 15 percent of Americans still connect to the Internet with a dial-up connection. So the median speeds in this report are actually higher than if dial-up Internet users had chosen to participate in the survey.

Internet speeds are fastest in urban and suburban areas, according to the report, and tend to slow down as you move out into rural areas.

There is a similar economic disparity. Whereas 85 percent of Americans who earn over $100,000 a year have broadband, only 25 percent of households that earn less than $20,000 subscribe.

Only about one-half (49 percent) of middle-income families earning between $30,000 and $40,000 a year subscribe to broadband, according to the report.

To test your Internet speed go to www.speedmatters.org.

AT&T Still Hiding Its Naked DSL

As we’ve blogged about before, AT&T has made it anything but easy for consumers to sign up for a no-frills Internet service the company was forced to offer in order to gain approval of its takeover of BellSouth at the end of 2006.

The good folks over at The Consumerist just posted the story of how an intrepid consumer was first told by AT&T that his address didn’t exist when he tried to get the no-frills service, but then had no trouble finding his address when he called back and asked about a much more expensive bundle of services.

You can read all about it here, including some good advice on beating AT&T anti-consumer games.