FCC Releases Speed Test App for iOS

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Posted February 26, 2014 at 10:12pm by iClarified

The FCC has released a new Speed Test app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

The FCC Speed Test app accurately measures your mobile broadband performance and displays an in-depth view of its factors (e.g. download and upload speed, latency, and packet loss).

Message From the FCC
Mobile broadband has become part of our everyday infrastructure. We hope the app helps provide greater clarity about your mobile broadband performance. Once installed, you can test your mobile broadband performance at the touch of a button. Aggregated, anonymous data will also help us build a map of mobile broadband performance across the country.

Privacy is paramount. The FCC has taken significant measures to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of volunteers for this program. Using privacy measures developed and reviewed by a diverse team of privacy experts, any data that could potentially identify specific smartphones is analyzed and processed to ensure privacy protection.

How does this help you?
• Run manual tests on Download Speed, Upload Speed, Latency and Packet Loss. (Make sure to disable Wi-Fi before testing cellular broadband speeds.)
• Additional passive metrics collected such as Carrier, Country Code and GPS location.
• Access real-time performance data on your device.
• Historical results available at the touch of a screen.
• Be a volunteer! You can help the FCC’s Measuring Broadband America program in developing the first open and transparent information on mobile broadband performance in the United States.
• By default, there is a 100 MB limit per month but this can be changed according to your preference--always consider your broadband usage carefully on limited data allowance plans.
• The app is ad-free.

You can download FCC Speed Test from the App Store for free.

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kcolevaltrebor@ - February 27, 2014 at 4:25am

This is excellent. I've paid for a certain speed for years and gotten a fraction of the speed advertised by the ISP (Succeed.net out of Norther California). I liken it to going to the store to buy a six-pack at full price and randomly getting 2 to 4 beers, very occasionally 5, but never 6. When you complain, the answer is, "You should be happy you can have any beer at all." They recently put a data cap on their service to compensate for having (apparently) over-subscribed their network, overtaxing their equipment. When I complained about this, I was told that they would be improving connection speeds soon. Great! So now I can eat my pre-determined bandwidth up faster. Just didn't make any sense, and they've been making similar promises for years, so I jumped ship. The new provider has no bandwidth cap, and I get speeds that correspond with 5 to 8 bottles of beer for the six-pack price. Much better. Still, since this is going to provide information to the government to help with their getting a snapshot of how broadband providers are doing generally, I think it's great. Finally, ISPs are going to be held accountable for their misleading advertising, and pressure put on them to improve their service. Now, let's just hope they can ferret out a solution that keeps the internet neutral. That'll be an excellent trick if they can manage it, though I'm not holding my breath.

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vix - February 26, 2014 at 10:20pm

i'll stick to speedtest app , thank you very much!!!

Vueapp - February 27, 2014 at 12:13am

Ditto.

NSA - February 27, 2014 at 5:44am

Lol you got me !! ;)