Comments on: Minnesota Broadband map — technique may be badly flawed http://www.urbanusers.com/?p=127 Mike O'Connor -- urban-user rep to the MN Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force Fri, 10 Sep 2010 06:30:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Dennis Fazio http://www.urbanusers.com/?p=127&cpage=1#comment-77 Dennis Fazio Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:21:44 +0000 http://www.urbanusers.com/?p=127#comment-77 Speed tests like these are oriented to residential DSL and cable modem subscribers. They will give a nice indication of your speed, at the minute of the test, if you're at home and on one of those types of connections. I'm not sure what the Task Force is going to discuss regarding this map. It certainly won't provide a comprehensive survey of "broadband" access. Only those folks who happened to find out about this nonprofit's site or happened to listen to MPR at the time and actually follow up will be mapped. That doesn't seem like a very good representative population sample. I'm having a hard time understanding what this map is really supposed to represent or what anyone can be expected to learn from it, regardless of the technical aspects of the accuracy of each result. Speed tests like these are oriented to residential DSL and cable modem subscribers. They will give a nice indication of your speed, at the minute of the test, if you're at home and on one of those types of connections.

I'm not sure what the Task Force is going to discuss regarding this map. It certainly won't provide a comprehensive survey of "broadband" access. Only those folks who happened to find out about this nonprofit's site or happened to listen to MPR at the time and actually follow up will be mapped. That doesn't seem like a very good representative population sample. I'm having a hard time understanding what this map is really supposed to represent or what anyone can be expected to learn from it, regardless of the technical aspects of the accuracy of each result.

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