Your blood pressure is normal, and your cholesterol levels are okay, too, but have you checked your internet download speed lately? A new service offered by the Federal Communications Commission [FCC] can help you make that diagnosis, while helping the government improve our national broadband status.<\/p>\n

Launched just days before the federal government announced its ambitious commitment to bringing America up to speed in the\u00a0on-line world, the Consumer Broadband Test<\/a> is now available on Broadband.gov<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0You enter your address, city and zip code, and the website launches\u00a0a speed test that\u00a0measures download speed, upload speed, latency (\u00a0the time it takes for data to be sent from your computer to the testing server and back–the “round trip time”), and jitter (the variability in the delay between your computer and the testing server.)<\/p>\n

Another feature of the website is its Broadband Dead Zone Report, which lets users submit a street address where broadband can’t be purchased.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0new\u00a0tests are part of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, which was unveiled on March 16.\u00a0According to Government Technology<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“Broadband speed and broadband coverage are two issues that the FCC is tackling. According to numerous studies, the nation’s average broadband speed lags<\/a> well behind several other industrialized nations. Through the federal stimulus, millions of dollars in grants have been awarded to states for mapping broadband coverage…FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski says that\u00a0the FCC [is] setting a goal of putting 100 Mbps broadband service in 100 million U.S. homes by the end of this decade.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your blood pressure is normal, and your cholesterol levels are okay, too, but have you checked your internet download speed lately? A new service<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128,882],"tags":[238,884,240,232],"yoast_head":"\n