SamKnows & the FCC

American broadband performance measurement

In April 2010 SamKnows was awarded a ground breaking contract by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to begin a new project researching and collecting data on American fixed-line broadband speeds delivered by Internet Service Providers (ISP's) - until now, something that has never been undertaken in the USA.

During 2010 SamKnows recruited a panel of consumer volunteers who each added a small 'White Box'’ to their home internet set up, to automatically monitor their own connection speeds throughout the period of the project. The specially developed 'White Box' does not monitor the home network or web traffic, but solely focuses on the relevant ISP’s network. In addition people who volunteer for the project are given access to their own data so that they can track the performance of their broadband connection comparing it against what their ISP is billing them for.

Alex Salter, CEO of SamKnows, commented that:

"We're delighted to be building on the success of the work we've undertaken in the UK over the past three years. We see considerable consistencies between the UK, the USA and indeed the rest of world in terms of the lack of a single methodology to accurately measure broadband performance. We’re delighted that both Ofcom and the FCC have chosen SamKnows ‘White Box’ to fill this measurement gap."

We're excited to be working with the FCC and some of the major American ISP’s and we’re looking forward to building up the FCC and SamKnows Broadband Community to a formidable size!"

The first report was published in August 2011 and due to its success, the project is continuing with plans to create an even larger dataset that can be used to analyze US broadband performance. If you’d like to volunteer, we’d love to hear from you. We’ll send you a SamKnows Whitebox which you can add to your home network and start accessing your own performance data as you test your ISP! You can sign up here.

For more information about SamKnows please visit www.samknows.com.