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University Provides Mobile Internet Quality Test Service

iPhone (William Hook/Flickr)Engineers and computer scientists at Aalto University in Finland are offering a free, online service to test the quality of mobile Internet connections. Netradar, available for download at netradar.org shows the quality of mobile Internet connections for individual devices, but also compared to other devices and locations.

Netradar is a project of Aalto’s communications and networking department, developed in the lab of computer scientist Jukka Manner. The Netradar service measures and stores data on location, upload and download speeds from the measurement server, data transfer delays, handset or tablet vendor and model, mobile operator company, base station, signal strength, and network technology. The service works anonymously and does not store or aggregate personal data.

From the collected data, Netradar measures the quality of mobile connections and shares the information with other users of the service in Europe, North America, and Asia. Netradar also displays maps displaying Internet connection quality in different locations. The data can help mobile-phone manufacturers and network operators improve Internet connections for mobile devices, as well as enable customers to evaluate the quality of their service compared to others.

“Our goal is to supply an accurate variety of statistics, analyses, and comparisons of mobile devices and providers,” says Manner. “For example, users can view service areas and speeds of mobile networks on a map in real time and compare different providers.”

The Netradar app can be downloaded from application stores as well as Netradar.org. The service currently supports  Android, iOS, Symbian, Meego, and Maemo operating systems. The developers say the Microsoft Windows Phone client is under review and will be available shortly. The service is also expected to be extended to measure and report on wired and wireless broadband connections.

Manner demonstrates Netradar in the following video.

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Photo: William Hook/Flickr

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