The City of Seattle would like citizens to know how cost-effective their internet is compared to others, so they can make an informed choice about which provider company to use, according to GeekWire. To that end, the City announced Friday that it would put together map of the city with data on internet speeds by area. The data for this map comes from an internet speed test available on the City website. The test asks users about how much they pay for internet, what provider they use, how many devices are connected, and then uses these data points to create a map color-coded by internet speeds.
The final version of the map will display price of internet along with speed, and will be available by the end of the month. It won’t identify specific houses, instead showing the trends within a six-block area.
An initial map is available already, and though it’s probably too early to draw any conclusions, the map so far suggests some interesting data points: for example, the slowest speeds as a whole are appear to be in South Seattle. Based on 378 samples, the median or most common download and upload speeds in the area below Georgetown and between Rainer Valley and the Duwamish River is 2 Mbps. This is rather slow — internet at this speed might struggle playing normal quality videos.
