But, if the commission is really trying to improve broadband, it should allow Broadband.gov users to enter what carrier they use and what they are paying, match the customer up to their plan, and then tell them whether their carrier is delivering on its promises.

The commission should also adopt rules that require carriers to typically deliver at least a certain percentage, say 90 percent, of their highest promised speed. Then customers, and the commission, could immediately know whether their Internet provider was or was not providing the service its customers pay for.

By aggregating this information and then slicing and dicing it in interesting ways, the commission could tell broadband users about typical speeds in their neighborhoods and rank the providers based on the actual speeds they deliver. It could also tell customers whether carrier speeds were increasing or decreasing over time.

The FCC could recruit customers who want to take part in a measurement program and give them an application that would periodically and while their computer is idle, run a speed check and report the results back to Washington. That would give the commission powerful information about the state of our broadband infrastructure in near real-time, if desired.