Comments on: OECD vs. SpeedTest

By: Rudolf

Rudolf — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:32:28 +0000

The OECD's methodology is that they publish the numbers as they are provided by the member states and/or as they are available from public sources.

What the OECD publishes is either the broadband penetration numbers they receive from the nations themselves (FCC, department of commerce etc provide those numbers for the USA) and they look at the offers from the largest operators in each nation to be able to do a price broadband comparisson. For a good explanation of how this works see the explanation Taylor Reynolds of the OECD provides. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/12224/1154/

What you are doing is you measure the throughput to a US site (Speedtest) from Korea and then compare this with the numbers as given. In doing this you forget that trans-pacific traffic is still a bit expensive and therefore often rationed. So while Koreans may get 50mbit/s on the network of their provider, of net in Korea this already may be lower, but towards the US this is definitely lower. Furthermore and on top of this, Speedtest relies on people going to their website and testing the speed. It just might very well be that Koreans are not too interested in the speedtest website, seriously affecting its usability.

By: Rudolf

Rudolf — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:32:28 +0000

The OECD’s methodology is that they publish the numbers as they are provided by the member states and/or as they are available from public sources.

What the OECD publishes is either the broadband penetration numbers they receive from the nations themselves (FCC, department of commerce etc provide those numbers for the USA) and they look at the offers from the largest operators in each nation to be able to do a price broadband comparisson. For a good explanation of how this works see the explanation Taylor Reynolds of the OECD provides. http://www.itwire.com/content/view/12224/1154/

What you are doing is you measure the throughput to a US site (Speedtest) from Korea and then compare this with the numbers as given. In doing this you forget that trans-pacific traffic is still a bit expensive and therefore often rationed. So while Koreans may get 50mbit/s on the network of their provider, of net in Korea this already may be lower, but towards the US this is definitely lower. Furthermore and on top of this, Speedtest relies on people going to their website and testing the speed. It just might very well be that Koreans are not too interested in the speedtest website, seriously affecting its usability.

By: Luis

Luis — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:23:32 +0000

SpeedTest’s methodology is ‘we test whoever visits the site.’ It is about as unscientific and invalid a polling methodology as you can get.

By: Luis

Luis — Tue, 06 May 2008 22:23:32 +0000

SpeedTest’s methodology is ‘we test whoever visits the site.’ It is about as unscientific and invalid a polling methodology as you can get.

By: Wyatt Ditzler

Wyatt Ditzler — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:04:23 +0000

Tim, some random discussions I and some people at CableTechTalk had a bit ago.
(http://www.cabletechtalk.com/news-items/2008/02...)

Also this report came out of the same discussion:
(http://www.phoenix-center.org/pcpp/PCPP29Final.pdf)

With the apparent flaws of the OECD numbers, I still think that they are the best measurement we have at this time. That is to say there is a lot of room for improvement.

By: Wyatt Ditzler

Wyatt Ditzler — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:04:23 +0000

Tim, some random discussions I and some people at CableTechTalk had a bit ago. (http://www.cabletechtalk.com/news-items/2008/02/06/the-trouble-with-broadband-deployment-statistics/)

Also this report came out of the same discussion: (http://www.phoenix-center.org/pcpp/PCPP29Final.pdf)

With the apparent flaws of the OECD numbers, I still think that they are the best measurement we have at this time. That is to say there is a lot of room for improvement.