Larger Municipal Networks Outperforming on Upload Speeds: Ookla
The study found eight of 14 municipal operators posted faster upload speeds than competitors, and one posted faster download speeds.
WASHINGTON, March 16, 2026 – A new report from Ookla found that some of the largest publicly owned broadband networks are holding their own against local competitors.
Among 14 of the largest publicly owned ISPs, Ookla found subscribers on eight of them experienced faster median upload speeds than on other providers in the area. One municipal provider, Oregon’s Sherwood Broadband, also posted faster download speeds than its competition.
Ookla analyzed subscriber speed test data from December 2024 through December 2025 from providers like UTOPIA Fiber in Utah and Connexion in Colorado. The better upload performance among municipal ISPs was partly because they’re mostly fiber, Ookla said, meaning there weren’t legacy copper or coaxial cable components in the network.
Municipal providers are also often designed for a specific area, meaning its central office is close by subscribers and traffic doesn’t need to travel far before being routed.
Cable giants Comcast and Charter are both in the process of upgrading their footprints to provide higher upload speeds in more areas. Comcast has upgraded about 60 percent of its footprint to “mid-splits,” which offer more upload capacity, and Charter has about 15 percent of its footprint on even higher capacity “high-splits.”
Charter CEO Chris Winfrey said earlier this month that the company would be halfway done upgrading its footprint to at least 1 gigabit per second upload speeds by the end of the year., with the rest to come later. Comcast is planning to upgrade much of its footprint as well.
A September 2025 Ookla report said those upgrades were paying off in certain markets, with cable upload speeds rising from the second quarter of 2024 to the second quarter of 2025.
Ookla noted municipal ISPs are not evenly distributed, as some states have laws preventing cities from selling broadband service directly or require a local referendum before a municipal ISP can get off the ground.
Those referendums “are often met with criticism from large ISPs that argue that municipal networks create ‘unfair competition’ because cities don’t have to pay the same taxes or can subsidize losses with taxpayer money,” Ookla Editorial Director Sue Marek wrote. “Some states, such as Colorado and Washington, have recently repealed state restrictions opening the door to more municipal broadband networks.”
All the municipal ISPs Ookla tested provided medium download speeds in excess of the Federal Communications Commission’s 100 megabits per second, but it was often just under what private fiber or cable operators posted. Sherwood broadband was the only one to outpace competitors on the download front, passing Comcast and Ziply Fiber with 400 Mbps.
“It's important to note that some Speedtest data may reflect the speeds of the users’ broadband price plans vs. the possible speeds that the provider can deliver,” Marek wrote.
Chattanooga, Tennessee’s EPB Fiber did not have any local competition to measure against.
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