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FCC Launches 'FCC Speed Test' iPhone App to Measure Mobile Broadband Performance

Rad99004 said:
There is satellite, data caps are a joke and the ping times are way to high.

I do use a point to point wireless system. It only provides 1 to 2 meg down but no data caps. Reliability is OK and the price is high. I don't complain because at least the two guys that run the company are providing the service.

I also use a ATT wireless MIFI.

Its a shame that my phone company won't provide service.

I have asked them for the last 20 years, I hope the same program that brought phone service to rural areas will bring high speed internet without low data caps.


ATT wireless is getting close but needs to offer a home plan in my area with better data caps and price.

Between the two plans I pay $200 a month.

The service I get is not even close for what people in town pay $20-$60 a month.
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I feel your pain, a little, anyways. $50/month for 3mbps. I thought we were getting the shaft until I read your post. I've come to terms with it, as there is no other competition besides ATT, which would charge us as much for half the speed. I figure at least I'm surrounded by the beauty of my rural surroundings and that's worth quite a lot to me.
 
sransari said:
Why is the FCC collecting Wifi performance data? That data is meaningless since performance of routers vary so widely and has nothing to do with anything.
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I would guess it is to gather info so they can punish some bad evil corporation (like the one you work for), because that is all the government does these days.

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eroslws said:
Careful now, you don't want to upset their tin foil helmets.

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… Until then, the best we can hope is the FCC. They are protecting us from "the wealthy," if anything.
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Really, if you think the government is not run by the wealthy, then please study some history. There is no government, anyplace on this planet that is not run for and by the wealthy (in spite of the campaign propaganda otherwise.)
 
valkraider said:
Actually, it's a brilliant idea. Net neutrality is super important. Unless you work for Verizon...
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Except there are loads of good, free, 3rd party apps with no connection to any ISP that already do this task. An FCC app is just a waste of our money at a time when gov't agencies are telling us they are short of funds.
 
Rocco83 said:
The fastest internets offered in my area is 5Mbps. :(

Image
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You're well below the national average which is 18.2Mbps. Must live somewhere pretty remote.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...stest-and-slowest-internet-speeds-in-america/

broadband.png
 
Chupa Chupa said:
Except there are loads of good, free, 3rd party apps with no connection to any ISP that already do this task. An FCC app is just a waste of our money at a time when gov't agencies are telling us they are short of funds.
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"No connection" to any ISP...sure. The reason this exists is the back door deals with places like speedtest.net that allow faster traffic to their servers so that people think they are getting more than what they paid for. The other day my internet speed was crawling along, yet speedtest reported 15Mbps down. I checked multiple high profile sites and they were all loading slowly - even AWS hosted ones which would be served to me off the east coast.

Have you seen the whole comcast/netflix thing? Soon any new startup is going to have to buy their way into the internet on top of their connection fees they already pay.
 
valkraider said:
Maybe because very few broadband providers offer speeds faster than even the oldest lamest wifi routers?

Even plain old 802.11b on a $20 router is faster than most broadband plans...
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yea but wifi network speeds are also based on signal conditions too...so what good does it to collect data on speeds that are limited by signal conditions and individual local network conditions?
 
C DM said:
The horror of the federal government knowing your internet speeds. You know, the same federal government that issued your social security number, and has your tax returns with your employment information and income, investment, and banking information. Yeah, we definitely need to worry about the federal government knowing about internet speeds.
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I agree that the worry is overblown and your point of view is spot on.
But from their paranoid perspective, it will ask you to give your location. So that will worry some further. And before iOS 6 I believe, apps had auto access to the camera roll and mic without asking (although now it asks separately for access). And the unique identifier for a phone could be tracked across different apps, also no longer the case.
But I'm sure privacy concerns are not 100% fixed, and more to be done we haven't thought of. So potentially there is more than just knowing Internet speeds.
 
jclardy said:
"No connection" to any ISP...sure. The reason this exists is the back door deals with places like speedtest.net that allow faster traffic to their servers so that people think they are getting more than what they paid for. The other day my internet speed was crawling along, yet speedtest reported 15Mbps down. I checked multiple high profile sites and they were all loading slowly - even AWS hosted ones which would be served to me off the east coast.

Have you seen the whole comcast/netflix thing? Soon any new startup is going to have to buy their way into the internet on top of their connection fees they already pay.
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Yes, but did I mention speedtest.net? No.

Yes, Comcast/Netflix deal is quite public. It also means that soon its possible any speed test could be pointless, so why doesn't the FCC work on getting Net Neutrality back in shape rather than spend it's limited precious resources on a public relations app?
 
I'm developing a new app for the iPhone. It's called "Tin Foil Hat for iPhone." When you run it it will keep aliens from tracking you as well as the NSA. It also has a GPS feature that sets off an alarm if you are being abducted by aliens (I guess the NSA could do that too). Haven't worked out how to warn you if an anal probe is about to take place though. But, in extreme cases you can also hold it against your forehead to make sure that your thoughts are not being read.
 
losthorse said:
I wonder what sort of Easter Eggs the NSA has hidden in this little gem...

and I wonder why Vodafone is the example used on a U.S. government app :/
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LOL. I think they use Vodafone so that they are not bias towards any US company.
 
LethalWolfe said:
I wonder what the methodology was, as Akamai's research last year had the average U.S. connection speed at 7.4 Mbps.

I think median speed's would be a better indicator though as averages can be swayed so much by extreme numbers on either end.
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Average is a much better representation than median. Median is going to pull everything down because you're always going to have 1 person using dial-up that will lower everything for everyone. Everyone in the US other than 1 person could have 1000Mbps fiber and that single person on dial-up would kill the median.
 
OldSchoolMacGuy said:
Average is a much better representation than median. Median is going to pull everything down because you're always going to have 1 person using dial-up that will lower everything for everyone. Everyone in the US other than 1 person could have 1000Mbps fiber and that single person on dial-up would kill the median.
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Actually you have it backwards. The median is less influenced by outliers. To find the median you arrange the values from smallest to largest and then count in to find the value that is in the middle. Having an extreme value at either end only moves you one value to the right or left.

On the other hand, with average one outlier creates big changes.

Let me illustrate. Steve Young (the football player) went back to BYU to get a law degree while he was still playing. When they calculated the average starting salary of graduates that year, it was a ridiculously high number because Steve's multi-million dollar contract was averaged across all of the students. The median, was barely affected because it only moved it from one value in the middle to the next highest value.

1,2,4,5,6,6,6,7,9,1000 Average =104.6 Median=6
 
joelvega125 said:
Any ideas why the FCC app shows my wifi speeds @ 10-15 MBPS slower than Speedtest?
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depends where their servers are compared to speedtest

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jclardy said:
"No connection" to any ISP...sure. The reason this exists is the back door deals with places like speedtest.net that allow faster traffic to their servers so that people think they are getting more than what they paid for. The other day my internet speed was crawling along, yet speedtest reported 15Mbps down. I checked multiple high profile sites and they were all loading slowly - even AWS hosted ones which would be served to me off the east coast.

Have you seen the whole comcast/netflix thing? Soon any new startup is going to have to buy their way into the internet on top of their connection fees they already pay.
Click to expand...

your ISP can't control when AWS is having problems, which is a lot of times

a lot of the instances on AWS are on oversubscribed physical hardware which has nothing to do with your bandwidth
 
Trojan Horse for idiots?

How secure is the wifi pass phrase? This seems like a *perfect* way to gather codes to eliminate security and allow more intense snooping.

Like maybe a new NSA/RIAA/MPAA effort to make us all criminals? It's not like those three groups haven't tried nearly everything under the sun to pry our personal networks open for 'inspection'...

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OldSchoolMacGuy said:
Average is a much better representation than median. Median is going to pull everything down because you're always going to have 1 person using dial-up that will lower everything for everyone. Everyone in the US other than 1 person could have 1000Mbps fiber and that single person on dial-up would kill the median.
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Someone beat me to it.
 
PinkyMacGodess said:
Trojan Horse for idiots?

How secure is the wifi pass phrase? This seems like a *perfect* way to gather codes to eliminate security and allow more intense snooping.

Like maybe a new NSA/RIAA/MPAA effort to make us all criminals? It's not like those three groups haven't tried nearly everything under the sun to pry our personal networks open for 'inspection'...

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Someone beat me to it.
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What exactly is it going to gather and how again? :confused:
 
The cost factor

The cost factor will be a major determinant in the participation of users. This is where sponsored data will be playing its role in this type of crowd source-based initiatives. FCC, in collaboration with Mobile Network Operators can offer free quota or zero priced rates on the use of the application, spurring higher number of downloads of the app which will track and report the performance in the background, without the user having to worry about incurring any overheads, especially for users on limited quota-based packages where 100Mb/month is still a considerable chunk of their monthly allowance. http://www.policychargingcontrol.com
 
C DM said:
What exactly is it going to gather and how again? :confused:
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It was my vain attempt to poke the bag of paranoia surrounding anything out there that could be connected with the government and any idea of 'helping the people'.

Kinda like that sci-fi movie about 'serving humans'...

Sorry for the confusion...
 
C DM said:
The horror of the federal government knowing your internet speeds. You know, the same federal government that issued your social security number, and has your tax returns with your employment information and income, investment, and banking information. Yeah, we definitely need to worry about the federal government knowing about internet speeds.
Click to expand...

I'm not concerned about what I know they know.
 
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