Notice: As of August 1, 2023, the FCC no longer partners with SamKnows on fixed broadband performance data collection, and SamKnows is no longer authorized to collect MBA data or provide fixed broadband performance analysis on the FCC’s behalf. The FCC will continue its Measuring Broadband America program work internally as it assesses Agency requirements for future potential procurement action related to the measurement of fixed broadband performance.
To stop unauthorized MBA data collection by SamKnows, a user should remove the Whitebox from their network after sending a Termination Notice to community@samknows.com stating that they would like to terminate SamKnows’ Measurement Services. If the Termination Notice is emailed before 5:00 pm Eastern Time on a business day, the user should remove the Whitebox from their network on the same day after they email SamKnows the Termination Notice. Otherwise, the user should remove the Whitebox from their network on the next following business day. Questions can be directed to Mr. Rajender Razdan at rajender.razdan@fcc.gov.
The FCC Measuring Broadband America program is based on principles of openness, transparency and partnership with diverse stakeholders.
The measurement methodology for the Measuring Broadband America program has been developed in collaboration with SamKnows, the FCC's contractor supporting the Measuring Broadband America program, who perform similar projects for other countries around the world.
Over the course of the two-year program the FCC has released the comprehensive measurement methodology used to collect the data and produce reports, and in addition to the various data sets, the actual software source code that was used for the testing has been made available for academic and other researchers for non-commercial purposes by SamKnows.
The goal of SamKnows is to help create a standard methodology for measuring Internet performance globally, and in pursuit of this goal, SamKnows is now making the source code of the actual tests available as open source under a GNU General Public License.[1]
The FCC would like to thank SamKnows for their commitment to the openness and transparency principles of the program, and welcome the opportunity to share the open source contributions of any other technology providers interested in supporting the program.
To obtain source code interested parties should visit www.samknows.com/opensource.
1 GNU General Public License, http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html.