Netflix posts its state of US and Canadian broadband in latest ISP report

Each month Netflix releases its "shame and blame" report, which covers the major US and Canadian ISP services. The streaming service is not kind, as it revealed problems on Comcast before giving in to demands to pay a fee to appease customers having issues.

The latest report has been issued and Comcast has risen in the ranking to a rather reasonable fourth place. However, the provider still lags behind rivals Cablevision, Cox and Suddenlink. But, it ranks above Verizon FiOS, Charter, AT&T and others. Verizon DSL finishes dead last, but that isn't a major surprise.

Netflix points out that several services have at least improved. "In the U.S., interconnection agreements with AT&T, Time Warner Cable and Verizon resulted in significant increases in Internet speeds for all three providers in August. AT&T U-Verse led the way, with its speed jumping more than one Megabit per second (Mbps) to 2.61 from 1.44 over last month and rising seven spots in the U.S. speed index to No. 7. Verizon FiOS speeds increased to 2.41 Mbps from 1.61, and Time Warner Cable rose to 2.59 this month from 2.16 in July. These dramatic increases pushed the U.S. average speed to 2.57 in August, now ranking 11th among the countries we track -- ahead of Brazil and Chile", says Anne Marie Squeo.

As far as Canada goes, Bell Canada led the way followed by MTS Fiber Optic, Shaw and more. Speeds at the top-end still exceed the US, which likely will surprise nobody.

We'll see what next month brings, but for now you can see both the report and the charts here. And let us know your experience on providers not covered.