Comrades, I have the same slow download experience. This is a drum I was beating a couple of weeks ago. I suggest you try the iPhone browser speed test at dslreports.com.
On my wired PC with a cable connection, I get 25MB, which is what Comcast is selling me. On a PC, of course, I can test the speed in a browser with Flash and Java tests. I have the most confidence in Stanford University's Web100 based Network Diagnostic Tool. My point being, I know what browsing with a fast connection looks like, feels like.
On my iPad, using the FCC app, I get 22MB. Yowsa! Government-certified speed. (Incidentally, I get 15MB on my iPad using the speedtest.net app, and I get 13MB on my iPhone using the FCC app.) So the FCC says I'm getting the same speed (close enough) on my wifi iPad that I get on a wired desktop. Now, I clear the cache in Firefox on my PC and download the LATimes.com. Blink of an eye. I clear the cache on my iPad and do the same thing. One Mississippi, two Mississippi . . . . Oops, the download gets hung up somewhere. Ultimately, it takes 10-12 seconds to download the page.
This is my experience not just with the LA Times, but with every web page. I'd be interested to know how the experience of other iPad users compares. I say the speed of downloading internet pages on an iPad doesn't compare to the speed of the internet on a computer. Not even close. I don't care what those speed tests apps say. They’re out of whack with downloading reality. If they're somehow accurate, it's because they're measuring something that doesn't relate to downloading web pages in the iPad browser. Also, if they're accurate, that means the downloading speed I'm getting is as good as it gets.
I'm not anywhere near knowledgeable enough to explain this, but I would make two points: I think there are a lot of people like me who do all their newspaper reading on the internet, and who might have hoped that the iPad would enable them to get out of their offices and do internet reading at the same speed. That is not the case. The speed of iPad downloads is much closer to the speed of iPhone downloads than to the speed of downloads on a computer. (ii) Getting fast connections via wifi is a problem that has been solved for years by every computer maker, or router gizmo maker, whatever. Why can't the iPad technology offer the same result/experience that any laptop does?
The results from the speed test apps, both FCC and speedtest.net, are illusory. I believe the dslreports iPhone speed test, which works within Safari, gives a better measure of download speed.