The Federal Mobile Computing Summit was held on July 9, 2013 in Washington, DC.

1. Mobile Broadband
Performance
Measuring Broadband America

2. Measuring Broadband America
• FCC National Broadband Plan
• Released 3/10
• Advocated FCC undertake measurement of Broadband America in
collaboration with industry
• FCC fixed broadband measurement program
• Reports released 8/11, 7/12, 2/13
• Ongoing: yearly reports
• Generally perceived as most accurate measurements of
consumer broadband performance
• Result of transparency of process and collaboration with industry
and other parties

3. mobile Measuring Broadband
America
• On 9/21/13 FCC announced extension of program to mobile
services
• Collaborative effort with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon, CTIA
and others
• Data collection effort to start later this year with initial public
results expected early 2014

4. What we are doing
• Smartphone app runs in background on volunteers phone
• Runs automatically at random times performing measurements
• App provides only network related data and results annonymized
• Data uploaded to cloud for presentation in maps and other
analysis

5. What We Are Collecting
• Network Performance Data, e.g.:
• Upload/Download Speed
• Packet Loss
• Latency
• Network Structure Data, e.g.:
• Service Coverage Data
• Tower ID/Signal Strength
• Bearer Channel

6. What is Unique About the
Program
• Core foundation: consumer privacy
• Collaboration with key industry players
• Transparency in process
• Statistically valid data collection
• Open, reproducible and extendable methodologies

7. Consumer Privacy
• Central to FCC’s policies and concerns
• Mobile data raises special issues
• Extensive discussions with representatives from Federal Trade
Commission, FCC, service providers, academics and others to
develop formal privacy policy
• Mechanisms in place to ensure data is anonymized and
processed in manner to ensure anonymity

8. Industry Collaboration
• Key tenant of National Broadband Program to work
collaboratively with major stakeholders
• Increases accuracy and success of program
• Provides potential for industry standardization
• Working with four major wireless carriers, CTIA and others in
open process
• Industry beta testing client software

9. Transparency
• Open meetings to discuss program milestones
• Publication of testing procedures, statistical scripts,
measurement methods, etc.
• Client software provided as open source
• FCC plans to provide GIS database displaying key metrics
• Underlying data freely available (subject to consumer privacy
policies)
• Future goals include making available thru FTP and through API
interfaces on FCC database

10. Statistically Based Data
Collection
• Android client software runs autonomously in background
• Tests performed regularly on randomized basis
• User bias minimized/eliminated
• Avoids user testing to determine ‘what’s broken’
• Collaboration with industry permits more targeted and more
successful volunteer solicitations

11. Long Term Objectives
• Continue to explore further utility of data
• We’ve focused on ‘low hanging fruit’
• Ongoing discussions with parties as to potential uses
• Continue to provide accurate data on evolution of broadband
• Promote standard metrics and cost efficient data collection
mechanisms
• Continue successful collaborative model