Believe Me, It's Radar Enforced!

My favorite is the "Radar Enforced" road sign collection. Product of a frustrated highway patrol officer? Below the nine photo collage is a cryptic fortune cookie message.

Week 1 Progress Map

The red dots indicate which locations our testers have completed as of the end of last week. The blue dots are locations that will be tested this week and in coming weeks.

Bravo! Photos from Week 1

I am constantly amazed at the geographic diversity of California, and the photos coming in from our field testers are proof. Their photos are wonderful. I'm adding a few of them from Week 1, but feel free to follow their progress on Instagram at cpuc_broadband_testing.

Mobile Internet Getting Faster, But Less Reliable?

 

Hey Everyone, Good News! Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint are able to deliver increasingly faster downstream speeds to your smartphone. The question is, how reliable are those speeds? Can you bank on getting 50 megabits per second every time you try to download a large photo to your smartphone?

The graph below shows the maximum downstream speeds measured for each of the four providers over the life of our mobile field testing program. During this multi-year period, we've seen the introduction of LTE networks by all four providers, and just recently Verizon announced the introduction of LTE Advanced, which promises a 50% increase in speeds.

 

 Newer technology = faster speeds.

Those of you familiar with this blog know that faster speeds sure are great, but more important is the reliability of those faster speeds. How likely will I be able to experience the faster speeds consistently?

One metric we collect is the standard deviation. A low standard deviation suggests that the speed measurements tend to be near the mean (average). Conversely, a high standard deviation suggests that the speed measurements are spread out over a wider range of values from the mean. Higher standard deviation suggests wider fluctuations in speeds.

The data we've collected suggest that as download speeds get faster, the standard deviation increases. For one session, you might get 2 megabits per second, and another session, 24.

Here is a graph comparing the mean downstream speeds between Fall 2015 and Spring 2016. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon seem to be delivering faster average downstream speeds compared to six months before.

Now, let's look at the standard deviation as a percentage of the downstream speed. Standard deviations have increased as a percentage of the average downstream speeds.

What does this mean? It's hard to say, but it appears the likelihood of getting the average speed at a particular location is lower than before. Here is what the average downstream speeds look like after lowering the mean downstream speeds by two standard deviations. Using this approach, we see a drop rather than an increase compared to the previous round of testing.

Fall 2016 Field Testing Begins

First photo from Steven Crews...

Verizon's LTE Advanced - Where's the Beef?

We were impressed with Verizon's announcement on August 29th about their launch of LTE Advanced in 461 markets across the country. Verizon claims its customers can get up to 50% faster speeds with LTE Advanced, so we ran a few tests in Chico, which is one of the 17 California markets included in the launch. Based on the few comparison tests between the Samsung Galaxy S6, which is included in Verizon Wireless' list of supported devices, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0, which is not, the results seemed to be tied. It turns out there are several variants of the Samsung Galaxy S6, and I suspect the model we have does not support LTE Advanced.

Summary of results:

Here's the of California markets where Verizon claims to have launched LTE Advanced. More to come on this topic as we figure out if there really is a boost with LTE Advanced....

1. Bakersfield
2. Chico-Oroville
3. El Centro-Calexio
4. Eureka
5. Fresno
6. Los Angeles
7. Merced
8. Modesto
9. Redding
10. Sacramento
11. Salinas-Monterey
12. San Diego
13. San Fran.-Oak.-S.J.
14. San Luis Obispo
15. Stockton
16. Visalia-Porterville
17. Yuba City-Marysville

CalSPEED testing in Rural Japan

While touring the Kansai region with my daughter last week and the week before, I ran a few speed tests on various muni WiFi networks. I’m surprised to see MOS hitting 4.0 for some of the tests despite pinging servers on the west and east coasts of the U.S.

1. City of Nara

Capital during the Nara Period (before the capital moved to Kyoto in ancient times), Nara claims to have the world's largest wood building, which houses a gigantic Buddha, Todai-ji. The speed test was run on a municipal network from a guesthouse in town. Deer roam freely through the main park, and you can buy "deer biscuits" for the equivalent of $1.50 to feed them.

Nara speed test (municipal WiFi)

  

City of Nara, south of Kyoto, Japan

Photo with "Sento-kun," the controversially creepy-looking town mascot.

Deer biscuits - "Awful for people"

2. Shirahama

Shirahama is one of Japan's three largest onsen (hot springs) resorts. The name means "white beach," and as you can see from the photo, the sand is white and the sea is turquoise blue. Because of its proximity to Osaka, it's a popular weekend destination. WiFi in Shirahama is available publicly and is paid for by the Wakayama Prefecture government.

Shirahama speed tests (municipal WiFi)

Shirahama is located on the southern coast of the Kii Peninsula