As the summer travel season begins, most travelers rush to make connecting flights and many of those travelers rely on their e-ticket on their mobile device to board the plane. Free Wi-Fi is great, but speed is important too.
An airport’s wi-fi speed is vital to making your vacation start out on the right flight and to connect with people via phone or email at a departing or arriving destination.
Ookla used its network speed analysis tool, Speedtest, to test the upload and download speeds at the most heavily traveled airports in the U.S. and Canada. It then produced a ranking of airports with the speediest connections.
These, according to Ookla, are the top U.S. and Canadian airports, in ascending order:
10. LaGuardia International
Travelers can expect downloads of 28.49 mbps and uploads of 16.03 mbps at this New York City airport.
9. Orlando International Airport
The airport continually monitors its bandwidth capacity and WiFi speeds. Orlando improved their download speed from last year by over 282 percent with downloads of 30.46 mbps and uploads of 51.20 mbps, the report noted.
8. Logan International Airport
Travelers through Boston’s airport can expect a download speed of 40.38 mbps and uploads of 25.53 mbps. There was some improvement from last year’s download speed of 32.22 mbps.
7. Vancouver International Airport
In 2017, downloads were at 55.06 mbps, and in 2018 the report listed the download at 50.11 mbps. The current average upload stands at 72.19 mbps, which greatly improves your e-ticket access. In 2017, the reported average upload at the airport was 57.52.
6. Philadelphia International
In 2018, expect a download of 51.38 mbps and an upload of 54.50 mbps in Philly’s airport. Speeds improved somewhat since last year, when it was 48.39 mbps for downloads and uploads were 53.3 mbps, the report found.
5. San Francisco International
Expect a download speed of 54.78 mbps, which is an improvement from 45.31 mbps compared to 2017. Uploads of 61.35 mbps also improved compared with 52.85 mbps last year.
4. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International
Despite a cyber attack in April that shut down the airport’s wi-fi service for 10 days, Atlanta saw a 2,124 percent improvement since last year, the report found. Expect downloads of 59.62 mbps and uploads of 69.34 mbps at Atlanta’s airport.
3. Calgary International
Speedtest found that Calgary had the fastest Wi-Fi download speeds of all airports in Canada. Expect a download 67.23 mbps and uploads of 87.99 mbps.
2. Denver International
Last year’s top wi-fi airport still delivers fast downloads of 78.68 mbps and uploads of 98.75 mbps.
1. Seattle-Tacoma International
SeaTac has taken the top spot away from Denver. Travelers can expect downloads of 103.00 mbps and uploads of 155.93mbps. The report noted that Seattle is also faster than global airports that were at the top of last year's charts, including Dubai International and Gold Coast Airport in Australia.
The full report can be viewed here.
