Automatic Broadband Speed Test

A quick one today as I'm dashing out to Southampton Dorkbot tonight - Maybe I'll write it up tomorrow.

I was reading Gina Trapani's post on the Federal Communications Commision's first ever hack day. The FCC is very much like OFCOM over the pond in the States. First of all I think that a hack day for OFCOM would be great, though much of it I think would be covered by hack days for Open Gov data (much like OpenTech 2010 - write up thanks to @edent).

But what I was most intrigued by was the FCC's API for testing broadband speed - something that would greatly help an idea I had sometime last year. At home, back in Finchampstead, we have terrible broadband often as slow, if not slower than dial-up. So in an effort to persuade BT/Tiscali/whoever-might-fix-that-mess I tried to do a broadband speed test every day and tweet out the results, maybe even chart them somehow. But I had to do this manually - going to speedtest.net (or something similar), do the test, and type up the results. What would have been great is if this would happen automatically every day - which is where the FCC's API comes in. Unfortunately it only seems to work in the US, but I think that OFCOM should build something similar if they're serious about getting fast broadband to everyone in the UK.

An idea that just occurred to me: I could include the speed test data in my house Twitter feed that I've had ideas about for ages.

Posted via email from 40_thieves's blog