[cphague]

Before blaming the provider, make sure you do not have an issue with the equipment in your home. The speed posted by these companies are normally what is coming into your house...not what most get when using their old PC's, tablets, old laptops, etc.

1 - When you check speeds, if you just check from your browser over wi-fi, that speed may be slower due to your issues with wi-fi in your house and wi-fi being inherently slower than what is on the cable coming into your house (unless you use wi-fi 6 and have all wi-fi 6 compatible connectivity points). If you check from a PC directly hooked up to the wi-fi router with an old NIC card that is incapable of high speeds, then that could be your slowdown point.
2 - If you know how, log into your wi-fi router or wi-fi router app and run the test from there. That normally will run the speed test from your wi-fi router. Again, if you have a router not capable of the speeds you are paying for, it might be your bottleneck.

Think of it this way, your car may be capable of going 120 mph. But you won't get that speed driving on hairpin curves, up and down mountain passes. You will get that on a straight, flat stretch of road.

One thing to consider, most people are buying more Internet speed than they need because we all have been told that will fix all of our problems. Unless you are streaming 4K all the time while trying to view videos on your laptop while the kids are online gaming all the time, you likely just need to upgrade your wi-fi router and cable modem (buy them and save on the monthly rent). Check your speed coming in the house from there, make sure it is what you are paying for and then start figuring out the bottlenecks...does that TV need to be on all day long type of issues.

Also, for those who want to not rent their modem and wi-fi, first consider if you want to support your own equipment and update it. Some automatically update while others you need to apply firmware updates and patches on your own. Are you comfortable doing that? If you rent, it is on the provider to update their device's software...and they normally do that.

Anyway, make sure the equipment in your house can handle the Internet speeds you are paying for. Make sure you actually need the speed you are paying for and not trying to speed up your devices that are incapable of handling the speed.