One interesting find from our annual look at the Best Gaming ISPs is that North Dakota comes out on top, earning it a Gaming Quality Index score of 26.9. Lower numbers are better here; the average for all states is 51.3.
How does this happen? It helps to be a state with few ISPs. When a state has only one or two high-quality broadband providers, the average for the state remains low. North Dakota has just one ISP that garnered results from more than 100 speed tests(Opens in a new window) (our cutoff for inclusion)—Midco(Opens in a new window), aka Midcontinent Communications. It’s a regional fiber provider for the Dakotas plus areas of Kansas and Wisconsin. Comcast owns just under half the company.
Midco’s quality rating is 21.7 across all its services. In North Dakota, Midco’s Gaming Quality index score is 15.2, which helps keep the state’s average quality level at 26.9—because there are far fewer tests to affect the average quality.
Compare that with Colorado, which is home to the best gaming ISP we saw this year, Nextlight—local broadband run by the utility company of Longmont. It earns a Gaming Quality index score of 5.2 across all of its connections. But there are several other ISPs in that state, and they push the average score for Colorado up to 34.3.
This isn’t too surprising. Colorado has about 7.4 times the number of residents of North Dakota—5.8 million compared with 779,094 as per the 2020 census(Opens in a new window). But states with fast, high-quality ISPs and lots of competition can stay in the running, which is demonstrated by states like California and Colorado. All it takes is a few overachieving ISPs, such as California’s Sonic (with a score of 7.0 for the state) or Colorado’s Nextlight and Fort Collins Connexion (5.6).
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To check out the top gaming ISP for each state in the US, pass your cursor or fingertip over each state in the interactive map below.
For even more information on the top gaming ISPs found in each state—including a searchable list of high-quality ISPs in every state—plus the best quality providers in metro cities, regions, and nationwide, and the full methodology, read The Best Gaming ISPs for 2023.
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