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In an effort to gather more data on US broadband speeds, the Federal Communications Commission is reportedly planning to install sensors on consumer broadband lines in volunteers' homes across the US. The sensors will measure changes in broadband speed and capacity and report the data back to the FCC (News - Alert). The program will arm consumers with a powerful tool for ensuring that they are getting the broadband speeds that their service providers have promised contractually.

This also could be the first and most important step the FCC takes in creating feasible net neutrality rules - that is if the agency is formally granted the power to create such rules by Congress. The FCC suffered a major setback in its desire to establish net neutrality rules last week when a federal court ruled that it did not have the power to set such rules because Congress never formally granted it the authority to do so.

One of the greatest challenges in implementing net neutrality rules will be how to go about enforcing them: The FCC or other appointed agency will, in essence, have to take on the role of "network traffic cop" to ensure that all ISPs and other service providers are delivering the speed and capacity that their broadband subscribers have been promised - and further that certain types of traffic aren't being blocked.

There is no way for the FCC to impose punitive measures on service providers that violate net neutrality rules without tangible evidence that they throttled or blocked certain types of traffic. Rather than taking the approach of monitoring network traffic in the core, the FCC could simply distribute edge devices that measure what customers are actually getting in terms of service, thereby protecting the rights of consumers and businesses while at the same time leaving service providers in charge of the intricacies of network "traffic shaping" to optimize the performance of their networks.

The sensors would not necessarily have to be deployed at every customer location in order to be effective as an overall means of policing provider activities: Much the same way a criminal can be IDd using several points of their fingerprint (called fingerprint mapping), the sensors could be strategically located along a provider's network in such a way that overall network performance can be accurately measured without having to monitor every endpoint.

Initially these sensors will probably only measure overall network speed - in other words they might not be capable of separating and measuring different types of network traffic, but that could be coming. The sensors, however, will not address the issue of traffic prioritization in the network core, and therefore will be perhaps of little consolation for major content providers such as Google (News - Alert), Yahoo or Amazon.

To carry out this task the FFC has reportedly awarded $600,000 in stimulus funds to SamKnows Ltd, a London-based firm which has done similar network monitoring work for Ofcom, the U.K.'s equivalent of the FCC.

"Our priority is conducting the most thorough study that will offer the greatest benefit to the American public and increase transparency in our broadband marketplace," an FCC spokeswoman was quoted as saying in a published report. "The FCC determined that the proposal from SamKnows represented the best value. Moreover, SamKnows has conducted a similar project for Ofcom in the United Kingdom which has been very well received."

Recently, the FCC released a broadband speed test on its Web site (and via an iPhone (News - Alert) app) to make it easier for consumers to get a general sense of what speed they're getting.

"We are tremendously excited about this announcement, the next step in the process of increasing transparency and competition in the broadband market and better informing consumers about their broadband service," wrote Dave Vorhaus, an FCC advisor in a blog post Friday. "The measurements will give us results across a broad swath of providers, service tiers and geographic areas."