Iowa City residents are not seeing the super-fast speeds promised to them by their Internet providers.

In fact, on average, the speeds are over 15 percent slower for downloading and 20 percent slower for uploading than they are advertised as in the Iowa City area, according to a recent study by Ookla, the company behind speedtest.net.

Other eastern Iowa towns are not seeing the speed, either, including Waterloo and Cedar Rapids, where Internet speed is slightly faster —only 10 to 15 percent lower than promised.

In addition, the company announced Tuesday that it will bump up the Internet speeds in all markets.

The slow speeds could be due to a multiple factors, said Ted Herman, a University of Iowa professor of computer science.

Herman said the slow speeds could be due in part to how many users of a particular Internet service provider are clustered in a neighborhood, as well as by the time of day the speed is measured.

In rare cases, Herman said slow connection could be the fault of malicious software or faulty hardware.

Mediacom, the largest Internet service provider in Iowa, had an average of 7 percent slower speed than advertised, according to the report.

Tom Larsen, Mediacom vice president of legal and public affairs said the company outperforms most competitors, and that it typically outperform the speeds it advertises.

— by Ian Murphy