The Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA) announced today (27 January 2013) that its broadband performance test website has been enhanced to support measurements of high speed broadband services.
Since its launch in December 2010, the test website has been very well received by members of the public. In 2012, the total number of performance tests conducted using the test website has exceeded 20 million, which averaged out to be about 54 800 tests performed per day, representing an increase of 250% when compared with the figure recorded in 2011.
“When the service was launched in December 2010, the vast majority of users were using broadband services with speed of up to 100 Mbps. The test website was therefore optimised for measurements under 100 Mbps then. With the increasing penetration of high speed broadband services over the past two years, OFCA has received requests from both consumers and the industry to enhance the test website so that users may measure accurately the performance of these services,” a spokesperson of OFCA said.
The enhanced system allows the broadband users to measure fixed broadband connections with speed of up to 300 Mbps. For mobile broadband connections, the enhanced system will significantly improve the accuracy of measurements for services with speed of up to 100 Mbps.
“Consumers may benchmark in an objective manner the measurement results against the services pledges and performance statistics published by all major fixed and mobile network operators on their websites. This enables the consumers to make informed choices on their broadband service providers, while enhancing the transparency of broadband performance,” continued the spokesperson.
“Users should however be aware that the performance of their broadband services may vary from time to time due to the many circumstantial factors that are constantly at work, such as network loading, user devices deployed, concurrent applications being used during the measurement and for mobile users, the radio coverage where the users are situated. Because of the interaction of these factors, the measured performance may not always match those promoted by the service providers,” the spokesperson elaborated.
Consumers may access the broadband performance test website via the official website of OFCA (http://speedtest.ofca.gov.hk). The mobile versions for Apple and Android mobile devices can be downloaded by searching “ofca” in iTunes App store and Google Play respectively.
Background Information
The broadband performance test website was launched by the former Office of the Telecommunications Authority in December 2010 for members of the public to measure the performance of their broadband connections.
The test website measures the key performance parameters, including download speed, upload speed, network latency, packet loss and jitter of the broadband service. Mobile version supports measurement of download speed, upload speed and network latency only.
To ensure impartiality and the accuracy of measurement performed, the test website is hosted at the Hong Kong Internet Exchange (HKIX), which is set up by the Information Technology Services Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Office of the Communications Authority
27 January 2013