Overview
The Measuring Broadband America Program provides a series of reports and data describing broadband performance experienced by consumers across the nation. Raw and processed data sets, testing software, and the methodologies used to process and analyze data are freely and publicly available. The collaborative process of the program reflects the contributions of diverse stakeholders from industry, public interest organizations, academia and government institutions. Researchers and developers interested in the program are welcome at regular meetings, and are encouraged to review the record of recent meetings by referencing the General Docket No. 12-264 using the FCC’s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs), or past meetings beginning in 2010 by searching ECFS in related proceedings CG Docket No. 09-158, CC Docket No. 98-170, and WC Docket No. 04-36.
Using Measuring Broadband America Data
The charts and other analytics produced for the Measuring Broadband America - February 2013 Report are available on this website in spreadsheet and other easily downloaded formats that do not require specialized skill. However, researchers and developers interested in working with measurement data in its raw form may need skills in database management, SQL programming and statistics, depending on the product. Data dictionaries, The HowTo below may be helpful in setting up a database and loading data.
View Database Setup and Importing instructions
Replicating the Test Results for the February 2013 Report
The process flow below describes how the raw collected data was processed for the production of the Measuring Broadband America - February 2013 Report. Researchers and developers interested in replicating or extending the results of the Report are encouraged to review and comment on the below. Please note that materials produced for the July 2012 Report made available below may also be useful for processing data collected in September 2012 for the February 2013 Report.
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Raw Data:
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Raw data for the chosen period is collected from the measurement database. The ISPs and products that panelists were on are exported to a ‘unit profile’ file, and those that changed during the period are flagged |
| Clean Data: | Data is cleaned. This includes removing measurements when a user changed ISP/product during the period. Anomalies and significant outliers are also removed at this point. See the data cleansing document validated-data-cleansing-april-2012.docx for more information |
| Per-Unit Results(CSV): |
Per-unit results are generated for each metric. It is at this point that the 7-11pm averages are computed and the trimmed mean calculated for each metric. The SQL scripts used here are contained in sql-scripts-processing--apr-2012.tar.gz. |
| SPSS Processing: | The per-unit CSV data is processed by SPSS scripts (available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/fcc-april-data/SPSS-scripts-20120718.zip), coupled with the unit profile data. This process removes ISPs/products with low sample sizes and computes statistical averages for the remainder that can be used in the report.
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| Excel Tables & Charts: | Summary data tables and charts in Excel are produced from the statistical averages. These are used directly in the report. |