The last-week launched broadband speed test tools - for Android, the iPhone, and the Web - by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have thus far been used by 150,000 people in the US.

While the results are not scientific - since the two test platforms, Ookla and M-Lab function differently; and there was no random sampling - they still clearly depict some general trends in US broadband.

While the Ookla test platform showed the average US speeds and upload averages to be 11.5Mbps and 2.09Mbps respectively; the M-Lab showed the average speeds and upload averages to be 7.04Mbps and 2.74Mbps respectively.

Further, a mapping of the statistics revealed that, as expected, the west coast has higher speeds vis-à-vis the other parts of the country.

The FCC can hope to get a much clearer picture about the broadband speeds once the test tool comes out of the beta; thereby indicating the potential to report the virtual "dead zones" that totally lack broadband service.

Moreover, to record the latency, speed, jitter, and uptime of companies, the FCC has issued a "request for quotation," whereby a company will be paid for providing a geographically diverse sample of 10,000 broadband connections.