What is the median U.S. fixed broadband download speed, in Mbps?

How to get close to this number

Anchor on what a connection has to do rather than on what a plan advertises. Streaming high-definition video needs single-digit megabits; streaming the highest quality available needs a few tens. A typical household median therefore has to sit comfortably above the demands of several simultaneous streams, but nowhere near the gigabit figures used in marketing. That bracket contains the answer.

The gap between advertised and delivered speed is where most guesses go wrong. Headline plans describe a maximum under ideal conditions; a median describes what half of real connections actually achieve, over real Wi-Fi, on real hardware, at real times of day. Those are different quantities, and confusing them inflates an estimate badly.

Two details make this figure slippery. It covers fixed broadband only, so mobile and satellite sit outside it, and it is a median rather than a mean — deliberately, because a small number of very fast connections would drag an average upward and describe nobody. The number is also one of the fastest-moving on this site, which is why the year attached to it matters more than usual.