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FCC Asks You To Test Your Broadband Speeds

Posted by kdawson on from the your-mileage-will-vary dept.

AnotherUsername writes "The Federal Communications Commission is asking the nation's broadband and smartphone users to use its broadband testing tools to help the feds and consumers know what speeds are actually available, not just promised by the nation's telecoms. At http://www.broadband.gov/, users enter their address and test their broadband download speed, upload speed, latency, and jitter using one of two tests (users can choose to test with the other after one test is complete). The FCC is requiring the street address, as it 'may use this data to analyze broadband quality and availability on a geographic basis' (they promise not to release location data except in the aggregate). The agency is also asking those who live in a broadband 'dead zone' to fill out a report online, call, fax, email, or even send a letter. The announcement comes just six days before the FCC presents the first ever national broadband plan to Congress. Java is necessary to run the test." Lauren Weinstein points out some of the limitations in the FCC's testing methodology.

14 of 454 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by Pojut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...I would like to help them out by providing the necessary data, but I'm not sure how comfortable I am with it...tinfoil hat and all that. Anyone planning on doing this? Why or why not?

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:Hmm... by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I did it from work, but said I was doing it from home. Further, I entered an address of a home (not mine) in a rural area in my state that is currently trying to get federal stimulus money because they have no broadband.

      So your goal to make sure they don't get any stimulus money for broadband by making it appear they do?

      Anyways, it's hard to imagine they won't be discarding outliers, and (regardless of intentions) your dishonest result will be an outlier.

    2. Re:Hmm... by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The solution to broadband is ridiculously easy -

      - Congress should mandate with a simple law that the telephone company must provide DSL to any customer requests it (within six months). The twisted-pair lines are already there, except for the need to add a neighborhood DSLAM. If Verizon/ATT/whoever balk about expense, simply point to the billions they received circa 1996 and say "use that". Actually the expense should be quite low to upgrade existing phone lines to DSL lines.

      So you're proposing that instead of the taxpayer paying for it via taxes, the customers will pay for it via price increases handed down by the providers to cover the extra costs?

      So it's OK for everyone to pay for it as long as it's not called taxes? Brilliant.

    3. Re:Hmm... by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Where would that money come from?

      Reaching into one's own pockets to assist his fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pockets to do so is despicable and deserves condemnation. - Walter Williams

      --
      This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
    4. Re:Hmm... by butchersong · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I believe his point was that the federal government is at the moment not capable of paying for ANYTHING. So yeah a consumer that wishes to have broadband paying for the service is preferable to the government borrowing more money to pay for something they wouldn't implement correctly anyway.

    5. Re:Hmm... by Ephemeriis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why? Well I'd like to see telco's held to their promised speeds as much as possible. If you are going to advertise one speed but only deliver a lower one, that's false advertising (or something).

      This is why I ran their test and submitted the results.

      If you go by my ISP's advertising you'll see they're offering 10 Mbps in my area. What you won't see is that regardless of which plan you sign up for, you're lucky if you can actually get 3 Mbps.

      So, by running their test, they've got something more accurate than what the ISPs will tell them.

      --
      "Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
    6. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can go to the library and read books thanks to my taxes? I only buy books - I have no need for a library.

      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can drive on improved roads thanks to my taxes? I work from home and have a big car - I have no need for pothole-free roads.

      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can send your child to a school funded by my taxes? I have no children, and if I did they would go to a private school.

      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can be assured of eating safe food, thanks to the FDA's use of my taxes? I have my own farm - I have no need for food regulation.

      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can get medicare thanks to my taxes?
      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can be safe thanks to the military funded by my taxes?
      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can drink soda made from HFCS, subsidized by my taxes?
      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can have onion routing, thanks to DARPA funded by my taxes?

    7. Re:Hmm... by svtdragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Under Obama's existing and projected budget, the debt increased by about $25 trillion during 2009, $15 trillion in 2010, and $10 trillion for the years 2011, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. Look up Obama's budget - it's there in plain balck and white.

      Yes--due largely to the unfunded liabilities that the Bush administration incurred before Obama even took office. See also: Medicare part D, estate tax repeal, Bush's tax cuts for the top 1%. Their full cost is playing out *now*.

      And you're assigning a numerical value per household, which is at best tangential to the issue of the debt/GDP ratio. See here and the plots here.

    8. Re:Hmm... by D+Ninja · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why should I work for 60 hours a week busting my rear so that you can sit in your parents basement getting high scores on Call of Duty since you have virtually no lag time thanks to my taxes?

      Well, um...I'm still getting lag time, so apparently you're not working hard enough...

    9. Re:Hmm... by Patch86 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This whole "up to" thing seems like a barely legal joke to me.

      If I ran a dairy delivery, and I offered my customers "packages" of either "up to 2 pints of milk, up to 3 pints, or up to 4 pints", and then proceeded to deliver them 1 pint, 1 1/4 pints, or 1 1/2 pints, do you know what would happen? I'd be bitch slapped by the Trade Descriptions Act quicker than you can say "but did you read the fine print?". You're not allowed to offer something that you have no intention of delivering, and that's that.

      It seems like the ISPs are in one of those strange legal loop-holes that so regularly plague the technology industries. It seems that the second someone introduces something "on a computer", the regulators completely lose their minds...

  2. if I were them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would selectively throttle http://www.broadband.gov/ to 110% of the nominal bandwidth being paid for :)

  3. Re:Windows firewall by moosesocks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not sure I like unblocking an application that the government is sponsoring either.

    Run a packet sniffer, and if you find anything particularly damning, there will be plenty of media outlets that will want to buy the story from you.

    Honestly, between Comcast and the government, I know which of the two I'd trust.

    --
    -- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
  4. Re:Why the need of an addy? by hanabal · · Score: 5, Insightful

    seeing as they don't ask for name or SSN or any other way of identifying you, it doesn't help whether they already have it or not. They need some way of tying results to location. If they asked for your name and phone number they could run it through the database they already have to determine your address as it is publicly known. but I think asking for that info would be worse. So they do the easiest thing and ask for address. Then they have a really easy job of tying results to location and the information you provided on its own is pretty harmless.

    Come on, this is a chance for you to help the Government slam the telco's. Which many slashdotters have been asking for for ages. Do it.

  5. Tail Wagging Dog by bxwatso · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I find it odd that, after the FCC has spent tens of billions of dollars promoting and installing broadband as a social service, they are now doing a study of who has broadband and where. It is almost as if they have been putting policy before the facts, a common Washington fault.