150,000 take part in FCC's broadband census, do their part for the greater good
The FCC wants you to help it kill bogus ISPs, and its primary weapon is its Consumer Broadband Test, released to the world last week. 150,000 people have already done their part, giving a glimpse at some early statistics describing just what the state of American downloadin' looks like. Average download from the Ookla test is a respectable 11.5Mbps and upload is 2.09Mbps, but if you look at the spread of those results a full half of test takers have a rather more pedestrian 4Mbps maximum download. An early map is included below showing results by state but, as Ars Technica points out, many of the "surprise" dark green entries (like Georgia) have only had a few-thousand respondents thus-far, and you can figure most are in-the-know enthusiasts paying extra to get their digital goods more quickly. It still remains to be seen exactly what the FCC will do with all these stats, because it doesn't seem to be releasing data tying speeds to ISP just yet. Hopefully that's coming.
