netBravo

netBravo is a European Commission crowd-sourcing project designed to gather and share radio spectrum data about mobile telephony coverage, WIFI channel occupancy, broadband and net neutrality connection tests. Anyone with a recent iPhone can download the netBravo app which will automatically record the characteristics of the signal they’re getting on their phone – WIFI, 4G, 3G, 2G or nothing - and test the latency, upload and download performance of their Internet connection with additional net neutrality tests they can select. This data is saved locally to the phone and can be sent back to the netBravo research database. The aim is then to plot the aggregated findings on a map, in an interactive web site (http://netbravo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/). Furthermore, some of the most useful network tools are also included: LAN scan, SERVICE scan and Traceroute. The app is free to download, does not contain any advertisements and it uses very little bandwidth and battery. The data is anonymised and will not collate or store any personal data. Continued use of GPS running in the background can dramatically decrease battery life.