Re: Uber, the US has more wireless broadband subscriptions per capita, according to the OECD, than anyone but Japan and Finland (basically tied with Sweden). Re: Netflix, we just broke into the top 10 on Akamai's ranking of average connection speed. On both metrics, we blow away the other big Western democracies (the U.K., France, and Germany).
I question the utility of average here. If I have a single gigabit user, I can dwarf a whole lot of 2-3 megabit connections. Good that we're ahead, but medians would be helpful here to give a better picture. Hopefully Akamai dealt with this somehow in their methodology.
I agree with you that a /median/ average is more illustrative of the progress than a /mode/ average.
However even better would be an actual /map/ showing you by area of ISP service, the fastest speeds (down and up) that an ISP is willing to attempt* (believe in a normal case they have a reasonable chance of success) to provide.
Then from that map, weighted by population density, reaching qualitative conclusions; such as mode average based on population, or the cutoffs at 20 and 80% of the population.
