Broadband ISP Speedtest.net Service Integrates Downdetector

Ookla has announced that they’ve begun to integrate their Downdetector service, which identifies and monitors when various popular online sites (inc. UK mobile operators and broadband ISPs) are suffering from network problems, with their popular internet connection speed testing app – Speedtest.net.

The update, which adds a Downdetector tab to the app with lots of real-time details on connection problems (covering information for over 12,000 apps, websites, and services across 47 countries), is currently in the process of rolling out to Android and iOS devices worldwide. But this integration goes a bit deeper and could be the start of something special.

Ookla hopes that using these free utilities will help people to diagnose whether their connection is in trouble or if there’s a larger service issue all in one place. As such, the output will be tailored to show what’s most relevant in your country (likely based on a geolocation of your IP address), while sites and services that are experiencing problems will appear at the top.

“Tap any site or service on the status page for a more detailed view of what’s going on. You’ll see a graph of incident reports over the last 24 hours as well as a chart of what types of issues users have reported. You can also tap on the blue button at the bottom of the page to submit your own report to Downdetector, including information about your experience. This helps other users understand what they might also be experiencing,” said Ookla.

Naturally, we gave this new feature a go, just to see how it performed. Generally, it’s quite useful, although it seems to set quite a low bar for assigning a ‘Red‘ status (i.e. an indicator of serious problems) to major national broadband and mobile operators.

For example, EE was marked Red based on just c.100 reports, and it was a similar issue with Sky (Sky Mobile / Sky Broadband). But such reporting levels are normally indicative of smaller localised problems (common), rather than any major national disruption. Since there’s no way to see user comments, like you can on their website (there’s also no UK map), then it’s harder to identify from the app whether the issue is localised.

One other gripe is that there appears to be no way to sort or search the list (e.g. the ability to set favourites is needed), which is a problem when it covers over 12,000 apps and services! Suffice to say, that’s a lot of scrolling and the list is mostly unordered. But with a bit more work, this could be a very useful tool, and we like how simple they’ve made it to report a problem in the first place.

Just don’t assume that any service you use with a ‘Red’ status will represent a problem that affects your own specific connection, often it won’t. Better use of historic data here would enable Ookla to set a higher bar for more accurately identifying larger outages.