Global "Last Mile" Performance Stats Going Public

Ookla, the company behind Speedtest.net, Pingtest.net, and the bandwidth testing apps deployed at many ISPs, has gone public with Net performance stats from 1.5 billion users (and counting). Their Net Index page displays download speed, upload speed, and connection "quality" from the EU and the G8, to countries, worldwide cities, and US states. Beginning today, the company is also making detailed (anonymized) data available to academics. "Ookla will also start surveying users about how much they pay for broadband and how much bandwidth they were promised by their ISPs. The results of those questions will go into building a Value Index, which will show how much people around the world pay per megabit-per-second for Internet access. In addition, by collecting postal codes from Speedtest users, Ookla hopes to map broadband service to local economic conditions, Apgar said. The Speedtest data could give the US government far more information to work with in setting priorities for its National Broadband Plan..."

Comments

Re:Disclaimer: I am an unabashed American.

[Archangel Michael]

Legalize sin (victimless crimes), tax things deemed "harmful" to society, and we'd have enough money to run government.

Profits aren't a dirty word, why would we want to tax people earning a living (income tax), investing (Capital Gains), and providing an inheritance for their kids(Death taxes)??

Taxes are punitive in nature, and when one realizes this, one can offer REAL solutions to societies problems.

And the best thing about "sin" taxes, they are entirely voluntary, if designed right. Don't like cars and big oil? Tax Gasoline, and gas guzzlers. Don't like certain drugs(alcohol)? Tax them.

The only thing making things like this illegal does, is cause crime. We don't need more people in prison, we need less. Meaning less things defined as "crime".

This approach would work except for one thing. That being the busybodies who want to rule everyone and tell them how to live, be they on the right (moral police) and the left (profit police).

And the best thing about such an approach, it would necessarily limit the actions society as a whole as deemed undesired, while at the same time, raising money from those that want to participate in such activities.

Don't want something? Tax it, it will go away. Make it illegal, it doesn't go away, it just becomes a crime. And "crime" should be defined by things like murder, rape, robbery, which have victims.