Author: Ookla

Ookla® is a global leader in connectivity intelligence that provides consumers, businesses, and other organizations with data-driven insights to improve networks and connected experiences.
Ookla Research™ Articles
| June 23, 2021

Creating a Better Customer Experience: How Ookla Helps Leading Mobile Network Operators Successfully Engage Customers

Downdetector


Winning and sustaining a customer’s business is a top priority for every mobile network operator. You could have the fastest network available in your market or the widest coverage, but still lose customers to competitors that provide better digital engagement or a more seamless customer experience. We know your team works day and night to make sure your network is operating, optimized and providing an experience that meets your customers’ expectations. Your team looks for coverage gaps where it makes sense to expand LTE or add 5G services. Your team constantly benchmarks your network against competitors to make sure you provide the best performance in key locations.

But despite all of your hard work, customer satisfaction with many telecommunications companies remains notoriously low and customer satisfaction doesn’t always align with network performance, as shown in the chart below. Customers often don’t feel like their problems are being addressed, they aren’t receiving transparent communications from their providers or they can’t even log problems due to service outages. Over time, these factors can add up to a lot of lost revenue, sunk costs and time and resources spent on issues and improvements that may not even increase customer satisfaction.

ookla_mobile-ranking_chart_0621

For the past 15 years, Ookla® has provided you with the tools to improve your network, including Speedtest Intelligence®, Cell Analytics™ and Downdetector®. Now, with the addition of our innovative SpatialBuzz solution, we can help you engage directly with your customers to identify, prioritize and diagnose customer dissatisfaction areas in real time for speedy resolution. Most importantly, SpatialBuzz allows you to close the customer feedback loop with meaningful, timely communications so that customers can see how hard you are working to improve their network experience.

Ookla is excited to offer you tools to improve your network performance and create a better experience for your customers. Click here to learn how top-rated mobile network operators are utilizing SpatialBuzz or inquire directly about any of our products.

Ookla products help you improve your network

Speedtest Intelligence is the leading source of information for networks worldwide

intelligence-screenshot

With over 200 data points on billions of consumer-initiated tests and coverage scans, ISPs, mobile operators, governments and regulatory bodies trust Speedtest Intelligence as an official source of record for the state of worldwide markets. Speedtest Intelligence offers up-to-date insights into global fixed broadband and mobile networks based on over 10 million consumer-initiated tests taken every day with Speedtest® and hundreds of millions of daily network coverage scans.

You may have used Speedtest Intelligence to benchmark your network against competitors, investigate your overall performance or pinpoint geographic trouble spots. With the addition of Consumer Sentiment data, you can now better understand the relationship between network performance and customer satisfaction.

Consumer Sentiment data in Speedtest Intelligence helps you better understand your customers’ experience on your network

You know that customer satisfaction plays a major role in retention, but custom research can be expensive. Consumer Sentiment data allows you to gauge customers’ overall satisfaction using the Speedtest Intelligence Portal. We aggregate one-question surveys presented at the end of a Speedtest experience, these responses are aggregated, analyzed and transformed into valuable insights.

Cell Analytics provides unparalleled intelligence about your network

ookla_cell_analytics

While benchmarking your overall network and customer experience is essential, knowing when and where exactly to invest more resources into your network is mission critical as you expand and improve your network. Cell Analytics provides unrivaled intelligence about wireless service quality, RF measurements, data usage, user density (both indoors and outdoors), cell site locations and much more, packaged in an easy-to-use interface. Cell Analytics uses the granularity of Speedtest network testing and gives you the performance, coverage and signal measurements you need to improve your network.

Unlike data collected by traditional methods such as drive testing and walk testing, Cell Analytics data is collected in real-world measurements where consumers are actually connected to networks — on streets, inside vehicles, at home, at work and other locations — with high location accuracy and 3D modeling. Combined with data on cell site locations, tools to prioritize optimization and deployment efforts, and competitor comparisons, Cell Analytics provides a comprehensive platform for mobile network operators to understand their networks and identify the areas that need improvement.

Downdetector Enterprise™ is the leading network outage monitoring tool

DD-dashboard
Network outages can be costly and time consuming to fix. Hundreds of millions of users worldwide use Downdetector to report issues with their mobile network operators, ISPs, communication apps and other online services. Downdetector Enterprise uses this consumer-reported information to provide early alerting on service issues — often before internal monitoring tools detect a problem is even happening. With customizable alerts for your NOC and SOC teams, Downdetector makes sure you get information about critical incidents as soon as customers start to report an issue. Geolocation information provides insights into exactly where customers are experiencing network problems, and problem indicators let you know which aspects of your service (e.g., voice calls, text messaging, mobile billing app) are causing issues.

SpatialBuzz is the next frontier of customer engagement

ookla_spatialbuzz-1_0621-2
Ookla has provided you with the tools to benchmark your network and customer satisfaction with Speedtest Intelligence, map and optimize your network with Cell Analytics and quickly identify network issues with Downdector. Now, we also offer a tool that marries the best of our offerings and directly connects you to your customers to deepen their network experience through more transparent, frictionless customer communication via existing web and mobile apps, AND provides the real-world data you need to prioritize network improvements by utilizing real-time customer experience data.

SpatialBuzz gives you the tools to engage directly with your customers, prioritize issues with your network using consumer-initiated data and increase your customer satisfaction by closing the loop on issues they encounter. SpatialBuzz is a one-stop solution that helps you deliver the best customer experience possible, even during outages or service issues.

spatialbuzz-1

Think of your network like this: You wouldn’t invest millions opening a world-class restaurant with the best chefs making the best foods and not staff it with waiters to make sure diners have an incredible experience or correct issues with the food, right? Unfortunately, many network providers have overlooked meaningful customer engagement on their digital transformation journeys. SpatialBuzz gives customers a better channel to communicate back to your network team, which allows you to provide world-class service. Customers want to check their network, find out about improvements, report problems with minimum fuss and see you working for them. To love you, they have to love the network. That’s where SpatialBuzz comes in.

spatialbuzz-2

SpatialBuzz aligns Digital, Customer Care, Service Operations and Network Teams to deliver an excellent customer experience. SpatialBuzz also empowers customers to report issues and check network coverage and status — seamlessly integrated into existing iOS, Android or web apps. It connects agents with coverage maps and data about network statuses, and SpatialBuzz can even automate network messages about known problems in geospatial locations. SpatiaBuzz also helps network and operations teams prioritize issues by customer impact; data shows that 2-3% of network faults create 80% of significant customer dissatisfaction. SpatialBuzz lets you proactively respond to these customers, seamlessly engages them and their issues and prioritizes your network response which saves time and money you might otherwise be spending elsewhere.

ookla_spatialbuzz-2_0621

Companies that have deployed SpatialBuzz have experienced, on average:

  • 40% reductions in customer calls
  • 15% faster call resolution
  • 80% lift in digital engagement
  • 1-9 hours earlier problem detection
  • Millions of dollars in cost savings
  • Improved customer loyalty with timely, proactive and transparent communications
  • Better problem prioritization
  • Bridged organizational gaps between customer care and network engineering teams

SpatialBuzz is the next frontier in creating a better network experience for your customers. When customers feel like they are being heard, seeing problems being fixed and are part of the closing the loop on issues, they will be more satisfied with your network offerings and they will help drive your company’s sustained revenue. SpatialBuzz is here to help you bolster your bottom line, so please don’t hesitate to reach out today and learn more.

Leading network operators are the ones that successfully engage their customers about their network

Ookla can provide you with all the tools you need to improve your network, pinpoint issues and increase customer satisfaction. We’re thrilled to offer you a suite of tools that holistically improves your network — and we’re thrilled to help you close the network–customer experience gap with SpatialBuzz.

If you’re interested in learning more about SpatialBuzz or any of Ookla’s enterprise offerings, reach out to us and inquire more about what we can do to help you improve your network.

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Downdetector
Cell Analytics
SpatialBuzz

About the Author

Ookla

Ookla Research™ Articles
| May 25, 2021

ICYMI: Ookla Data and Research from April 2021

Global Speeds

Highlights from the Speedtest Global Index™

Global-Index-Tweet-Image-April-2021

These are the top stories from April 2021:

  • Greece is up 11 places to 17th on mobile, their highest rank to date.
  • Increased 5G coverage in the United Kingdom was likely a factor in moving up 11 places on mobile to 21st place in April, a record high for the country.
  • South Korea blazed forward 10 spots to second place for fixed broadband.
  • Japan rose four spots to 20th for fixed broadband, the country’s highest rank since July 2020.

Other items worth a second look

Starlink: Bridging the Digital Divide or Shooting for the Stars

starlink-q2-2021
Elon Musk’s Starlink could be a game changer for many rural communities, but is it delivering high speeds? Read more to learn about how Starlink is shooting to be an internet superstar.

World Telecom Day Is a Reminder that a Better, Faster and More Accessible Internet Is Possible

world-telecom-day
Details on how Ookla® collaborates with providers, regulators and researchers to help create a better, faster and more accessible internet for everyone.

Choose Your National Park Adventure: The Best Places to Work Remotely or Digitally Disconnect

national-parks
Find out which national parks in Canada and the U.S. have the fastest mobile speeds, best 4G Availability and access to 5G.

How Ookla Ensures Accurate, Reliable Data: A Guide to Our Metrics and Methodology (Updated for 2021)

methodology-2021
Learn about the metrics Ookla uses to describe mobile and fixed broadband network performance and mobile coverage and how Ookla aggregates data.

5G Speeds in Australia are Almost Twice the Global Average

australia-5g-2021
The race for Australia’s fastest 5G provider is competitive. Learn why Australia’s 5G networks are some of the fastest in the world.

How Etisalat Went from Regional Leader to the World’s Fastest Mobile Network Operator in 2020 (Case Study)

etisalat-2021
Learn how Etisalat used Ookla Speedtest data to become the world’s fastest mobile network operator.

Prevalent and Fast Wi-Fi in Thailand Drives Improvements in Internet Speeds

thailand-wifi
Discover new details about the influence of Wi-Fi in Thailand including provider- and province-level data on speeds and improvement.

Cryptocurrency Volatility Causes Coinbase and Other Trading Platforms to Struggle with Outages

crypto-crash
Find out what the Coinbase outage on May 19 looked like based on data from Downdetector®.

Ookla 5G Map™

5g-map
Over the past month, we saw 20,097 new 5G deployments across 106 countries. Click here to see the Ookla 5G Map in your area..

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Global Speeds

About the Author

Ookla

Ookla Research™ Articles
| May 17, 2021

World Telecom Day Is a Reminder that a Better, Faster and More Accessible Internet Is Possible

Ookla for Good


For the past year and counting, the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged communities across the world and exposed how important access to reliable, fast internet has become. As people quarantined and started working and educating children from home, internet service providers across the globe rushed to meet unprecedented demands and have (mostly) risen to the challenge.

I’m honored that Ookla® has been able to collaborate with providers, regulators and researchers to help create a better, faster and more accessible internet for everyone. These partnerships are a significant part of what makes my job so exciting. That’s why for World Telecom Day 2021 I want to take a moment to highlight a few of these collaborations and how they are doing their part to accelerate digital transformation during these trying times.

Global internet providers rose to meet the global demand for internet at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic

Last year, Ookla joined the World Bank’s Development Data Partnership platform as part of our Ookla for Good™ initiative. This partnership has been illuminating — in a study of internet performance across 18 African countries, the World Bank found that internet usage increased during times of “stay at home orders,” public and private sectors collaborated to increase access to the internet, and internet speed decreased modestly at the start of COVID-19 shutdowns, but recovered over time.

Similarly, Ookla partnered with Fundació to analyze internet performance in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Autonomous Community of Valencia during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fundació found (much like the World Bank) internet speeds slowed during the first few weeks of the COVID-19 lockdowns but gradually began to increase in the months after.

Organizations are working to increase access to internet, which is still out of reach for many Americans

As more people stay at home to work, go to school, connect with loved ones and live their lives, internet access is more important than ever. But this past year has shown the painful cracks of the current state of the internet in America. Equitable access has become a universal issue, from America’s biggest cities to its rural areas where the digital divide has been proven to be wider than ever before.

Ookla’s partnerships with the Center for Data and Computing (CDAC) at the University of Chicago and Kids First Chicago have been especially important in the effort to more accurately measure broadband performance and access within urban communities. CDAC postdoctoral researcher Jamie Saxon has already utilized our Ookla Open Datasets to create interactive maps to show the urban internet divide across several major U.S. cities.

Internet access is also a huge issue in most of America’s rural communities, and Ookla has been honored to team up with House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn to map the best broadband in South Carolina, as well as which rural areas need better internet access. We’re excited to see our data being used to help shape public policy and we look forward to teaming up on further collaborations with local, state, tribal and federal governments in the future.

ITU Study Group 12 is setting international standards for telecommunications network performance

Ookla isn’t just helping improve today’s internet, we’re making sure the future of the internet is fast and accessible. James Carroll, Director of Strategic Initiatives, is representing Ookla in International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) Study Group 12 to create international standards for performance, quality of service and quality of experience for the internet. Among many other ITU achievements, we recently worked with leading network providers, fellow vendors and regulators to craft standards for how crowdsourced network performance data can best be used for innovative policymaking to ultimately improve consumer experiences with fixed and mobile networks.

Internet speeds will keep getting faster and Ookla will continue providing world class testing and resources

It’s almost unbelievable that when we started Ookla over 15 years ago the typical fixed broadband connection in the U.S. averaged a median download speed of only 4 Mbps — 45.7 times slower than today (182.69 Mbps). I’m extremely proud of how Ookla has helped to make a better, faster and more accessible internet for all. Just imagine what we can do together over the next 15 years. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and transformational thinking, but we’re ready for the challenge. I’m excited by the partnerships and opportunities to come – and look forward to creating even more positive change through better connectivity for people around the world.

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Ookla for Good

About the Author

Ookla

Ookla Research™ Articles
| May 3, 2021

How Etisalat Went from Regional Leader to the World’s Fastest Mobile Network Operator in 2020 [Case Study]

Group Performance

The upheaval of the COVID-19 crisis has created acute challenges for mobile network operators. As consumers are more reliant on their networks for access to work, education and other vital services, the resulting surges in traffic have disrupted years of careful network planning for most operators. Already the winner of the Speedtest Award™ for Fastest Mobile Network in the Middle East for 2019, Etisalat sought both to maintain its high standard of network performance and quality — and to support the United Arab Emirates’ national initiatives to ensure connectivity while citizens stayed safe at home.

Etisalat used Ookla® Speedtest® data to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the state of networks, to support national initiatives from the Ministry of Education and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and to consistently improve their network performance and capabilities in the face of unprecedented demand. As a result of their network’s performance, Etisalat was awarded the Speedtest Award for World’s Fastest Mobile Network in 2020.

image-etisalat-quote

Situation

As the country locked down, Etisalat was faced with an exponential surge in network demand. In addition to meeting their own customers’ expectations, the operator also needed to meet goals set by the regulatory bodies and to help fulfill national initiatives for the UAE Vision 2021 plan, which aims to establish the country as a cohesive knowledge economy by 2021. In support of these missions, Etisalat focused efforts on improving their mobile network, supporting business continuity in a work-from-home environment, facilitating distance learning and providing entertainment to families at home.

Read the full case study

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Group Performance

About the Author

Ookla

Ookla Research™ Articles
| April 7, 2021

What to Do When Your Customers Report an Outage on Downdetector [Webinar]

Downdetector

Time is critical when your customers think your service is down. Diagnosing the issue can be especially challenging if your internal monitoring tools are showing green but users are flooding customer care and social media with problem reports. Network operations centers (NOC), systems engineering and DevOps teams are often pressed to provide answers to questions like “What happened?” and “When will the issue be resolved?” and “If all of our systems look good, why are customers reporting problems with our service?” Downdetector® can help.

Use Downdetector to diagnose the root cause when your customers are experiencing issues — especially when the root cause is a third-party system your business relies on. Downdetector Enterprise™ aggregates consumer-submitted problem reports and other key indicators from across the web to help your business continuity teams quickly diagnose and resolve potential problems — while also providing data to customer care and marketing teams so they can swiftly communicate known issues to impacted customers.

The upcoming Ookla® webinar on April 27 will show you how to leverage user-submitted data via Downdetector Enterprise to quickly diagnose the problem and rapidly respond when customers are reporting problems.




Read on to discover eight actions you can quickly take using Downdetector Enterprise to diagnose problems and decrease your mean time to resolution (MTTR) when customers think you’re going down.

1. Receive immediate alerts when customers are impacted

As soon as a sufficient number of Downdetector users submit a problem report with your service or any service you monitor in Downdetector Enterprise, you immediately get an alert. Set specific thresholds within Downdetector Enterprise for when you would like to receive alerts to ensure the issue meets your criteria. For example, we see some Downdector users using 80 problem reports as their threshold, meaning they only receive an alert if over 80 problem reports come in.

downdetector_enterprise_rss_0421_light

Alerts can be customized in the Downdetector Enterprise Dashboard and are available via email, push notifications from the Downdetector mobile app, RSS feed or via the Downdetector API — all of which can easily be integrated with Slack or any other internal monitoring or communication tools.

2. Determine how many users the incident is impacting

The moment you receive an alert that customers are reporting a potential service disruption, you can begin investigating the size and duration of the incident.

downdetector_enterprise_reports-over-time_0421

This graph shows a real-time view of problem reports in the last 24 hours for your service. This view allows you to see when problem reports started escalating as well as the number of reports for each 15-minute interval.

3. See which problems customers are reporting

The Downdetector Enterprise Dashboard helps you quickly get to the root cause of an incident. Problem indicators in Downdetector show the specific features where users are reporting difficulties.

downdetector_enterprise_top-indicators_0421

The Top Indicators page on Downdetector Enterprise shows the number of problem indicators broken down by the feature causing problems for customers. The available problem indicators customers can select from for a given company or service differs across industries. For example, problem indicators for an online gaming company might include online gaming, log-in, website or other relevant features.

4. Monitor external services that impact your business

NOC and DevOps teams can usually diagnose issues within their own service environments — but when issues are caused by an external service, internal monitoring tools may not be able to provide early alerting. Sometimes when customers report an issue with their favorite online service, they’re really experiencing an issue with their ISP or mobile network operator. Alternatively, problems may be caused by a content delivery network (CDN), cloud hosting provider or other systems that impact your service delivery.

downdetector_enterprise_reports-by_0421

The above view shows Reports by Provider, which displays a breakdown of which communications service providers customers are using to access your service. If a significant number of users experiencing problems are coming from a single service provider, it may indicate either an issue with that provider’s service or a network peering issue.

Downdetector Enterprise empowers Customer Care and Marketing teams to help customers resolve issues related to a given ISP or mobile network. By monitoring major communications service providers in your key markets, you can track when they go down and adjust your communications to better serve your customers. In some cases we’ve seen companies simply advise customers to switch from their cellular network to Wi-Fi to fix the problem caused by a mobile operator’s service issue.

5. See locations where users are experiencing issues

The Report Heatmap in Downdetector Enterprise shows the locations where users are experiencing issues.

downdetector_enterprise_report-heatmap_0421a

Easily zoom in to see the individual locations where problem reports were submitted. This view can help you diagnose whether the issue is limited to a specific location or if it impacts users worldwide.

6. Compare your incident to those of competitors or similar companies in your market

Downtime is expensive. And in certain industries, downtime can drive customers to your competitors’ websites or services.

downdetector_enterprise_compare_0421

Above is a comparison of two service providers over time. Use this view to compare and contrast your reported outages during a specific time period against up to four other companies. If you see a correlation between spikes in problem reports, you can infer that you weren’t alone in customers believing you were down. If you see overlaps in outages across a variety of companies, it may indicate an issue with a commonly used external service such as a CDN, cloud hosting provider or telecommunications provider.

7. Access your company’s historical incident reports

To input custom data ranges and look at historical data, navigate to the upper right hand corner of the dashboard and select “Last 24 hours.” This will open a dropdown where you can enter in custom dates and times. This can be helpful when conducting internal research to start identifying any patterns in your outage.

downdetector_enterprise_reports-over-time-historical_0421

If you’ve determined that the root cause is internal, analyzing historical outage information can spotlight patterns or surface potential issues related to seasonality or other external factors. This feature can also be helpful to pull data for reporting after customers have reported an incident.

8. Understand the conversations your customers are having about the incident

Downdetector provides a direct view into customer sentiment surrounding a perceived outage in real-time.

downdetector_enterprise_comments_0421

Downdetector Enterprise monitors tweets about potential service disruptions and comments on your company’s Downdetector page to detect trends. The aggregated word cloud feature allows you to quickly see common themes in these posts.

The webinar on Tuesday, April 27 at 7 a.m. PDT (10 p.m. EDT / 2 p.m. GMT) will show you how to rapidly respond when users report problems on Downdetector. Don’t miss it. A recording will be provided for registrants who can’t tune in to the live presentation.





Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Downdetector

About the Author

Ookla

Ookla Research™ Articles
| February 17, 2021

ICYMI: Ookla Data and Research from January 2021

Global Speeds


Highlights from the Speedtest Global IndexTM

Global-Index-Tweet-Image-January-2021-2
These are the top stories from January 2021:

  • Spain climbed five ranks and reached ninth place on fixed broadband. This is the first time the country has reached the top ten.
  • On mobile, the United Arab Emirates is in first place for the fifth time in 13 months.
  • Greece climbed to 29th place, most likely due to an expanding 5G market.
  • Denmark reached fifth place for fixed broadband for the first time in the last year.

Articles worth a second look

Introducing Video Testing from Speedtest

Video streaming is a crucial part of the internet experience. Now you can directly measure your video’s quality using Speedtest for iOS.

Emerging 5G Market Keeps Canada in the Global Top 10 for Mobile Speeds

Canada’s 5G market may be less than a year old, but its expansion has provided provinces and cities across the country with speeds that far exceed those over 4G.

Advances in 5G Boosts Mobile Speeds in Taiwan

This comprehensive report on Taiwan’s mobile speeds shows the impact 5G has had on the market — and how speeds vary by operator and across the country.

Illustrating the Worldwide Growth of 5G (Poster Download)

This poster illustrates the impact of 5G on network performance worldwide using data from Speedtest Intelligence®. Download the free poster to see the full picture of the industry’s achievements.

New Year, Great Data: The Best Ookla Open Data Projects We’ve Seen So Far

Read more about the most exciting open data projects from Ookla For GoodTM that really show what this data can do.

“There’s a Problem With Your Connection” — The Most Significant Outages of Q4 2020

Did you experience an online service outage during Q4 2020? Find out what online service outages made headlines during the last three months of 2020.
Upcoming webinars

Upcoming webinars

Using Crowdsourced Data for Competitive Network Intelligence in Latin America

In the upcoming Ookla® webinar, offered in both Portuguese and Spanish, we share how mobile operators in Latin America can monitor and benchmark their competitors’ performance and also prioritize network optimization in the areas most important to their customers.

pr-cta1
Wednesday, February 24 at 11 a.m. BRT

es-cta1
Thursday, February 25 at 9 a.m. CST (10 a.m. EST/PET/COT)

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Global Speeds

About the Author

Ookla

Ookla Research™ Articles
| February 8, 2021

Introducing Video Testing from Speedtest

Ookla News


Video. Can you imagine the internet without it? Truth is that most of us spend much of our online time consuming video of one sort or another. Given how much time we all spend streaming video, the ability to directly measure video experience is an important tool for network management. We’re excited to announce that Ookla® Speedtest® has a new video test that can help you measure the quality of your streaming experience before you queue up your next video. Video testing is free and currently available on Speedtest for iOS with more platforms coming soon.


Why you need a dedicated video test

Speedtest has been measuring overall network bandwidth to provide reliable internet performance data for over a decade. While network speed certainly impacts your video experience, providers around the world sometimes limit the resolution or prioritize video traffic differently than other traffic. This means that video can perform very differently than the rest of the things you do online, no matter how fast the download speed of your network.

Enter video testing from Speedtest, which plays an actual video to specifically measure the performance of video streaming on your network at any time. An accurate video measurement requires an actual video to be played, because video traffic cannot be simulated across a network.

Get actionable results

Streamed video content is typically delivered via adaptive bitrate technology, which adjusts the quality of the video stream based on network conditions. A video test measures this adaptive bitrate to tell you the maximum resolution, load time and buffer you should be able to expect given current network conditions. It’s a great way to assess whether now is a good time to settle in for that video you’ve been waiting for or if you’ll be stuck buffering for the duration.

A video test will also tell you which devices work best at that performance level. This can help you decide whether to try to stream on your largest TV or if you should use your phone instead.


If the video test determines your network cannot successfully stream the maximum resolution supported by your device, you most likely have a network problem. Taking a Speedtest will let you know whether you’re getting lower than expected network bandwidth needed to stream your video. If your video test results reveal that you are frequently not able to stream well, you can use your video test history to advocate for yourself when talking to your provider.

Where to find video testing in the Speedtest iOS app

Video testing is already part of the Speedtest app on iOS and will be available on more platforms coming soon. The test is conveniently accessed from a tab at the bottom of the app. Just tap the video icon in the menu bar at the bottom of the app to get started.


Along with the new video test, we’ve also moved some other things around in the Speedtest app to provide a better organized user experience.

  • Network and device information, server selection, and Speedtest settings preferences are available in the sliding drawer at the bottom of the speed tab.


  • Your results history (including video test results), app settings, privacy policy and terms of use, and support resources are available in the hamburger menu in the upper corner of the app.


Try video testing on Speedtest for iOS today by opening the Speedtest app on your phone (or downloading it from the Apple App Store if you don’t already have it).



If the video test finds that the video streaming quality meets or exceeds the resolution supported by your device and you are still unable to stream your video, you will have the option to continue on to Ookla’s Downdetector® to see what online services are currently experiencing any issues.

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Ookla News

About the Author

Ookla

Ookla Research™ Articles
| January 28, 2021

Illustrating the Worldwide Growth of 5G (Poster Download)

Global Speeds


We’ve already written extensively about the massive increase in 5G in 2020. Still, the impact of 5G on network performance is easier to understand when you can see it illustrated at a global scale. We’ve used data from Speedtest Intelligence® to create a downloadable poster that celebrates the industry achievements of 2020.

pdf-download

This poster maps 5G coverage, highlights the countries with the fastest 5G and illustrates the countries with the most 5G deployments, all as of Q3 2020. Download the Worldwide Growth of 5G poster from Ookla® here to see the full picture of 5G performance, coverage and deployments. It works as a desktop background or you can hang it on your wall.

Congratulations on a banner year in 5G, and cheers to even more improvements in 2021!

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Global Speeds

About the Author

Ookla

Ookla Research™ Articles
| December 15, 2020

Treat Yourself to a Hack Day: Make a Physical Speedtest Gauge

Hack Day


Sure you love taking a Speedtest®, but have you ever seen the results manifest in a 3D statue that lives on your desk? Now’s your chance. This article contains everything you need to construct and program an ethernet-enabled physical Speedtest Gauge. All you’ll need to build it is access to a 3D printer, some affordable and easy-to-find parts, and a basic working knowledge of both electronics and command line interface (CLI) tools. Then you can proudly display your Speedtest gauge on your desk or gift it to a friend who also loves to nerd out over networks. Either way, you’ll have the most fun setup for measuring network throughput in town.

Components you’ll need

The total cost of all the components below is around $65, and the project will take about two or three hours to complete, not counting the time to 3D print the enclosure.

This project requires the following components to work:

  • A soldering iron. A basic one should do fine.
  • Jumper wires to connect the various components together.
  • A stepper motor. This project used this model but feel free to upgrade to a better one. The limitation of this one is that the max speed is slow and so the gauge needle is not very quick.
  • Programmable LED lights. This project uses three neopixel ring lights. Note that you will need three of these to form the full gauge. You can also find cheaper versions of these rings elsewhere.
  • Physical buttons. A good candidate for buttons are these mini push buttons.
  • A Raspberry Pi. This drives the LED lights as well as the motor and runs the actual test.
  • A good power source for the Raspberry Pi. Optional if you buy the raspberry pi linked here which comes with a power source.
  • The 3D-printed housing. The housing and needle are where you finally get to put everything together. The STL printable files can be found on this GitHub project.
  • The free Speedtest CLITM. The latest version of the official Speedtest CLI is used to actually run the network performance test.
  • Unbuffer. This is needed to parse the Speedtest CLI output. You can install it by running apt-get install expect.

How to assemble your Speedtest gauge

Step 1: Print out the housing using a 3D printer. The instructions can be found in this GitHub project.

Step 2: Attach the stepper motor to the center of the 3D-printed housing. Then attach the stepper motor driver to the motor, attach the +5V and GND on the controller to the appropriate Raspberry Pi GPIO pin.

Step 3: Attach the needle to the tip of the stepper motor. You can snap them together with some glue.

Step 4: Connect the controller to the Raspberry Pi with the following GPIO mappings:

IN1 to GPIO17
IN2 to GPIO22
IN3 to GPIO23
IN4 to GPIO24

Step 5: Solder the neopixel rings per this guide on Adafruit. Note that we will be using three segments only. After that, connect the +5V and GND on the neopixel lights to the +5V and GND on the Raspberry Pi. Then connect the data line to GPIO18 on the Raspberry Pi.

Step 6: Inset the neopixel ring into the gauge indent. You can use sticky tape or soft glue to hold it in place.

Step 7: Insert the button in the button hold in the bottom left corner of the front housing. Solder two wires to the connections at the back of the button and attach one lead to GPIO1 (3.3v) on the Raspberry Pi and the other to GPIO10.

Step 8: Use the extra space in the back where the Raspberry Pi ports are accessible to pass through the power cable and plug it into the Raspberry Pi.

Use the software to run Speedtest

The software you’ll need to power your new Speedtest gauge is available on this GitHub repository and can be downloaded for non-commercial use. The main sections control the LED lights, the stepper motor and run the CLI test. You can pull this code on the Raspberry Pi and set it to run on startup. Make sure you set the SD Card to read-only mode to prevent data corruption due to reboots.

The following components control the gauge:

  • speedtest.py. This runs the Speedtest CLI app and parses and returns the speed measurements as well as the current stage
  • gauge.py. This class takes in the current speed and calculates and moves the needle to the angle represented by the speed. It also lights up the LED based on the position of the needle.
  • button.py. This simple wrapper handles events from the button, which runs the test.
  • run.py. The root file listens to the button events and coordinates between the Speedtest and gauge movement.

To set up the gauge, load the repo on the device and run the code below. Note that sudo is required to access the GPIO ports on the Raspberry Pi.

sudo python3 run.py

Note that you can use the src/speedtest_bootup.service (change the script location) to always start the software on reboot.

There you have it! Your very own Speedtest gauge. Share your pictures with us on Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #SpeedtestGauge.

prototype

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

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| November 5, 2020

Unable to Connect — The Most Significant Online Service Outages in Q3 2020

Downdetector

“Is it down?” frustrated users asked themselves during the multiple online service outages in Q3 2020. The fourth installment of our online service outage tracking series used Downdetector® data from Q3 2020 and focused on the following online service categories: cloud services, collaboration platforms, financial services, gaming, internet service providers and social media.

Cloud services

Cloudflare (July 17, 2020): 14,198 reports at peak

Downdetector_Cloudflare_Outage_1020

On July 17, a major disruption in Cloudflare’s service broke the internet, taking multiple online services down with it. Users rushed to Downdetector to log issues with multiple services that rely on Cloudflare for content delivery, including 4chan, DoorDash and Zendesk. At the peak of the outage, there were 14,198 reports of issues with the service in the U.S.

Azure (September 28, 2020): 2,846 reports at peak

Azure, Microsoft’s cloud service, was affected by September 28’s Microsoft-wide outage (see next category). Users from Germany, India, Japan and the U.S. stated they had issues with the cloud service. That day, there were 2,846 reports of issues at the peak of the outage in the U.S.

Collaboration platforms

Office 365 (September 28,2020): 20,437 reports at peak

Downdetector_Office365_Outage_1020

Microsoft’s suite of online collaboration services including Outlook, Sharepoint, OneDrive and Skype went down on September 28 (along with Azure, see above). Logs of issues with the services started coming into Downdetector at 3 p.m Pacific. Most users stated being unable to log in or connect to the server. At the peak, there were 20,437 reported issues in the U.S. Users from Japan and India also logged problems with the service that day.

Zoom (August 24, 2020): 17,874 reports at peak

On August 24, users were upset to find that they were unable to connect with their coworkers, friends and family through Zoom. Most users stated problems with logging in and joining a conference. There were 17,874 reports of issues in the U.S. at the peak of the outage. Users in the U.K. and Canada also had issues with the video conferencing service that day.

Google Drive (September 24, 2020): 14,715 reports at peak

Users in the U.S., Philippines and Indonesia were unable to collaborate on projects, upload files or access their documents stored in Google Drive on September 24. At the peak of the outage in the U.S., there were 14,715 reported issues. Users of Google products YouTube and Gmail also logged issues in Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico and the U.K.

Slack (September 29, 2020): 1,396 reports at peak

Slack received 1,396 logs of issues at the peak of the outage reports on September 29. Users in the U.S. had problems with sending messages, videos and images to their peers — and some were unable to connect to the platform at all.

Financial services

TD Ameritrade (August 18, 2020): 7,814 reports at peak

Downdetector_TD-Ameritrade_Outage_1020

The online stock investment tool reportedly went down on August 18. Users were unable to log into their account or buy and sell stocks. At the peak of the outage, there were 7,814 reports of issues in the U.S. There were two other notable outages that month — August 17 with 5,816 reports at peak and August 31 with 6,893 reports at peak.

Gaming

Steam (August 5, 2020): 69,255 reports at peak

Downdetector_Steam_Outage_1020

Users from Brazil, Germany, Japan, the U.K and the U.S. submitted issues with Steam on August 5. Most users stated problems when trying to log into the platform and play with other users. At the peak of the outage in the U.S, there were 69,255 reports of issues with the gaming platform.

Fall Guys (September 2, 2020): 2,890 reports at peak

The Fall Guys status page on Downdetector showed there were problems with the popular online game on September 2. Users in Brazil, the U.K. and the U.S. were struggling to play the game online. That day, 97% of reports stated problems with the server connection.

Internet service providers

Spectrum (July 29, 2020): 56,318 reports at peak

Downdetector_Spectrum_Outage_1020

Spectrum users from the both coasts of the United States flooded Downdetector with logs of issues with the service when they started experiencing problems with their internet connections. Complaints with the service started surging at around 5 p.m. Pacific and lasted for about an hour. At the peak of the outage there were 56,318 reports of issues.

CenturyLink (August 30, 2020): 11,543 reports at peak

CenturyLink customers on the East Coast of the U.S. had problems with their internet service on August 30 starting around 2 a.m. Pacific and ending around 8 a.m. Pacific. There were 11,543 reports of issues at the peak of the outage.

Social Media

WhatsApp (July 14, 2020): 148,573 reports at peak

Downdetector_WhatsApp_Outage_1020-1

A multi-country outage affected WhatsApp on July 14. Users from all over the world stated problems with sending and receiving messages on the Facebook-owned app. The country with the most issues submitted was Germany with 148,573 reports of issues at the peak of the outage. Users in Brazil, India, the Netherlands, Mexico, Spain and the U.K. were also affected by the outage.

Facebook (September 17, 2020): 30,918 reports at peak

Facebook users from multiple countries experienced problems with the social media platform on September 17. More than half of the logs were labeled as “total blackout” — users were unable to access the platform or any of its features. There were 30,918 reports of issues at the peak of the outage in the U.S. Users in Italy, Poland and the U.K. also had problems with Facebook that day.

Want to know when an online service is down? Keep up with outages by visiting Downdetector.

Ookla retains ownership of this article including all of the intellectual property rights, data, content graphs and analysis. This article may not be quoted, reproduced, distributed or published for any commercial purpose without prior consent. Members of the press and others using the findings in this article for non-commercial purposes are welcome to publicly share and link to report information with attribution to Ookla.

Downdetector

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Ookla