The Performance Inequality Gap, 2026

The 2026 baseline assumes 9 Mbps downlink, 3 Mbps uplink, and 100 ms RTT, using the Samsung Galaxy A24 4G and HP 14 as 75th-percentile reference devices. Page-load budgets of three and five seconds are set for pages with 15% and 50% JavaScript. Median mobile pages now average 2.6 MiB, with JavaScript payloads twice as large as in 2015. Core Web Vitals pass rates stay under 50% for mobile and under 60% for desktop, showing persistent performance gaps.