A national survey of Internet speeds conducted by SpeedMatters.org has found Rhode Island has the fastest median connection speeds in the United States, though the country as a whole lags behind others around the world.

Between September 2006 and May 2007, nearly 80,000 people in all 50 states and the District of Columbia took an Internet speed test online to measure how fast their computers upload and download data.

Users took the test through the SpeedMatters Web site, a project of the Communication Workers of America in Washington, D.C. They used either a DSL connection or cable modem. The 30 to 40 percent of Internet users still relying on dial-up connections did not take part in the test because their Internet speeds were too slow.

Rhode Island ranked No. 1 for both download and upload speeds. The median speed for uploads in the state was 1.739 megabits per second (mbps) – but that is still seven times slower than speeds in Japan. The median download speed was 5.01 mbps, compared with a U.S. median of 1.97.

In Japan, the median download speed is 61 mbps – 30 times faster than in the United States. The United States also trails South Korea, which clocked in at 45 mbps, Finland at 21 mbps, Sweden at 18 mbps, and Canada at 7.6 mbps.

The median upload speed in the United States from the Speedmatters.org test was just 371 kilobits per second (kbps), far too slow to be of use for many of the new applications being created in the market, such as electronic medical records, according to the report.

Kansas ranks second for download speed and 12th for uploads, and New Jersey ranks third for both download and upload speeds. Massachusetts ranks fifth for download speeds and 24th for upload speed.

Leigh Ann Woisard, director of public relations for Cox Communications, didn’t seem surprised at the results for Rhode Island. In 1995, Cox made the decision to invest in a top-of-the-line fiber optic/coaxial network in the state, she noted, and it has invested $530 million in the network. Rhode Island has 5,472 miles of fiber – both aerial and underground.

“We believe that Rhode Island is the most broadband-ready state in the nation,” Woisard said. “The network was built with the intention of being adaptable to the ever-growing and changing technology needs.”

Rhode Island may have ranked so well because it is such a small state, and there are players here dedicated to making sure high-speed Internet is accessible to virtually everyone, said Tim Hebert, CEO of Atrion Networking Corp. in Warwick.

One such group is North Kingstown-based OSHEAN, a nonprofit coalition of universities, hospitals, government agencies and other nonprofit organizations that provides Internet-based technology solutions for its member institutions and the communities they serve.

George Loftus, executive director of OSHEAN, said Rhode Island’s ranking is due to access; Verizon and Cox blanket most of the small state, giving the majority of households here access to high-speed Internet connections.

“Our small size means that many people can use DSL because they are within the range that DSL works from the phone company’s central offices — this is not the case in larger states that have a larger rural population,” Loftus said.

And because the presence of Cox, Rhode Islanders have a real choice of providers, Loftus added, “and the competition in the marketplace between Cox and Verizon leads to affordable rate plans. … Rhode Island is truly one of the most wired states in the country – again, likely because of our small geographic size.”

Cox Communications just completed “Project EON,” an initiative to expand the capacity of its current fiber-optic infrastructure. EON stands for Extendable Optical Network.

For Internet customers, the completion of Project EON means Cox can offer speeds of up to 20 mbps with the “PowerBoost” feature the company introduced in April.

“The beauty of our network is that we can make upgrades and continuously add capacity without having to undergo a total rebuild,” Woisard said. “Having the ability to quickly and continuously upgrade our network without having to totally rebuild has definitely been key for us.”

Though Atlanta-based Cox does not release information regarding who its customers are, Woisard said the commercial side of the business is one of the fastest-growing.

“Cox Business Services has grown its commercial customer base by nearly 28 percent year-over-year nationally, well on its way to becoming a billion-dollar business by 2010,” she said.

Verizon would not comment directly on the survey, though a spokesperson did provide information about the company’s new FiOS service, a fiber optic network designed to compete directly with Cox not only in broadband, but also in video services. Thirty-five percent of Verizon’s customers are businesses.

FiOS service is available in only 16 states, offering downstream (to the user from the network) speeds from 5 mbps to up to 50 mbps and upstream speeds ranging from 2 mbps to up to 10 mbps.

Internet connection speed is considered important because it supports innovations in telemedicine, education through virtual classrooms, and public safety, among other fields. Most U.S. Internet connections today are too slow to permit interactive home-based medical monitoring, multi-media distance learning, or to send and receive data to run a home-based business, Speedmatters.org reports.

For example, people in Japan pay the same rates for Internet connections as U.S. subscribers, but they are able to download an entire movie within two minutes, while most U.S. Internet users would need two hours, according to the report.

The Federal Communications Commission defines “high-speed” as 200 kbps downstream, but Speedmatter.org calls this far too slow and suggests the government set the “high-speed” definition at 2 mbps downstream and 1 mbps upstream.