How North Carolina compares
Desktop vs mobile
By operating system
📡 Most-used test servers
Internet providers measured in North Carolina, ranked by speed
Median real-world speeds for the 10 fixed home internet providers with at least 100 distinct connections in North Carolina, fastest first. These are the speeds their customers measured, not advertised plan speeds, and not a statement of who can be bought at a given address.
| # | Provider | Download | Upload | Latency | Connections |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Google Fiber | 299.1 | 219.9 | 15 ms | 500+ |
| 2 | Brightspeed | 286.4 | 147.6 | 24 ms | 500+ |
| 3 | Metronet | 283.6 | 147.7 | 29 ms | 100+ |
| 4 | Lumos | 277.5 | 158.6 | 20 ms | 250+ |
| 5 | Optimum | 261.3 | 23.2 | 42 ms | 100+ |
| 6 | Focus Broadband | 232.1 | 147.6 | 29 ms | 100+ |
| 7 | Spectrum | 212.2 | 24.4 | 35 ms | 5k+ |
| 8 | AT&T | 201.6 | 120.1 | 31 ms | 1k+ |
| 9 | Windstream | 141.8 | 73.6 | 23 ms | 100+ |
| 10 | Starlink | 17.7 | 10.8 | 36 ms | 100+ |
Starlink is a satellite service: a single browser stream over a link with a long round trip measures well below the figures satellite operators quote, and the latency column shows why.
Measured in North Carolina and named rather than ranked: T-Mobile US, Verizon. In North Carolina each of these is the operator's mobile network rather than a wired home line, and a browser test cannot tell a phone from a 5G home gateway on the same network. Ranking them beside fibre and cable would compare two different products.
Also measured, with too few connections for a median we would stand behind: Ripple Fiber.
Internet in North Carolina: what the data shows
In North Carolina, the median real-world download speed is 190.9 Mbps, 31% above the median published state of 145.6 Mbps, ranking #1 of the 39 states and districts with enough data to publish. That is among the fastest we publish.
North Carolina is the fastest state we publish, and it leads from depth rather than one outlier: its four quickest providers all sit above 275 Mbps against a state median of 190.9.
Uploads median 28.6 Mbps and latency 34 ms.
Desktop and mobile tests run at about the same median speed, with mobile making up 31% of tests.
Across the 10 fixed providers with enough connections to rank here, medians run from 299.1 Mbps (Google Fiber) down to 17.7 Mbps (Starlink), a 16.9× spread inside one state. Which network reaches an address matters more here than which state the address is in.
The North Carolina sample carries enough tests to name 13 providers, 40 counties and 61 cities and localities. Atlanta was its most-used test server, taking 62% of the tests among the five busiest.
Figures are medians of 25k+ browser-based tests from 10k+ distinct connections, first half of 2026. Each connection counts at most three times, third-party sources are capped, and datacenter networks are excluded, so one busy line cannot move a state. That makes these numbers a different series from the national figure on the United States page, and they are not directly comparable to it.
Where the North Carolina data comes from
40 counties with enough tests to name:
Show all 40 countiesShow fewer
61 cities and localities with enough tests to name:
Show all 61 cities and localitiesShow fewer
Counties, cities and localities are named, never numbered, and listed alphabetically. Speeds below state level are part of the licensed dataset.
Where North Carolina ranks
Test your own speed in North Carolina
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Frequently asked questions
What is the average internet speed in North Carolina?
The median real-world download speed in North Carolina is 190.9 Mbps, with 28.6 Mbps upload and 34 ms latency, measured from 25k+ browser-based speed tests on SpeedOf.Me.
Where does North Carolina rank among US states?
North Carolina ranks #1 of the 39 states and districts we publish, 31% above the median published state. We publish a state only where at least 2,000 distinct connections back the number, so 12 of the 51 are not listed at all.
Why is this lower than the speed my provider advertises?
An advertised speed is the maximum the line can carry. This is a real-world measurement through a browser to neutral servers on the open internet, which is what a video call, a download or a game actually gets. Wi-Fi, the device and time of day all sit between the two.
Which internet provider is fastest in North Carolina?
Of the fixed home internet providers with at least 100 distinct connections in North Carolina, Google Fiber has the highest median real-world download speed at 299.1 Mbps, ahead of Brightspeed at 286.4 Mbps. That is the median its customers measured here, not an advertised plan speed, and a provider is only as fast as the line that reaches your address.
Which internet providers were measured in North Carolina?
13 providers had enough tests in North Carolina to name: AT&T, Brightspeed, Focus Broadband, Google Fiber, Lumos, Metronet, Optimum, Ripple Fiber, Spectrum, Starlink, T-Mobile US, Verizon, Windstream. 10 of them carry a ranked median speed on this page: the rest are either a carrier's mobile network in North Carolina rather than a wired home line, or below the 100 distinct connections we require before publishing a median. That list is not a market-share estimate or a statement of who can be bought at a given address.
Are speeds on phones lower than on computers in North Carolina?
Tests run on phones and tablets, over home Wi-Fi or a cellular connection, are 31% of the North Carolina sample and median 196.3 Mbps. Tests run on desktops and laptops, which are almost always on a fixed line's Wi-Fi, median 187.8 Mbps. This is a device comparison, not a comparison of providers.
How current is this data?
It covers first half of 2026 and was last updated on 2026-09-05. The dataset is free to reuse with attribution under CC BY 4.0.
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