Trai's MySpeed (TRAI) mobile app crowd-sources network quality information

Trai has launched a mobile app called MySpeed (TRAI) for Android smartphones to aggregate network quality information. This will hopefully provide consumers, policy makers and telecom service providers a nationwide high quality database of signal quality and network speeds. The application is meant for users to find out the speed of their connections, and inform Trai about it. The initiative would give TRAI a constantly updating nationwide database on wired and wireless broadband connection speed tests.  The application is very simple and minimal, and only has four tabs. There are no ads, and the application can be used to test the speed of both wired and wireless networks. The first tab is the speedtest page, which prefers to test the Wi-Fi connection over a mobile one if both are active at the same time. If there are two SIM cards in the device with a data connection enabled, then the application conducts the speed test on the second SIM card only. The second tab is a list of past results, which shows the operator, time and download speeds. All results are in mega bits per second, and there are no options to change this.  The speed is displayed in a graph, and the graph can break and go out of the screen if the speeds are too high. If the network is cellular, then the operator name appears, otherwise the SSID of the wireless network is displayed, along with a label that identifies the network as a Wi-Fi network. The saved speedtests can be sent to Trai at any time, and it is not necessary that a test has to be sent to Trai right then. The third screen shows specific results, with a download speed, upload speed, network delay and packet loss. Network delay is the term used by the application for ping. These results can be sent to Trai. Each result is also accompanied with a date stamp, a time stamp and a the latitudinal and longitudinal co-ordinates. The final tab has what looks like a settings gear icon, but is a static about page that explains what the app does.  There is a note that no personally identifiable information is collected, and that the data stored is anonymous. There is also a clarification that just sending Trai poor results does not constitute as a complaint against the service provider, and this has to be done separately. There are no settings that can be configured. If you press the back button while a test is being conducted, the app prompts you to first stop the test and try again, but there is no way to stop a test once it is underway. The application freezes during the test at times, which essentially locks down the app and prevents users from doing anything. Here is a video walkthrough of the application.

A majority of the 75 users who rated the application so far on the App store have given it a one star rating. The most listed complaint is that the app crashes, and does not work as intended when launched. The application is available on the official Mobile Seva Appstore, as well as Google’s Play Store. The application is available for devices with Android 4.3 Jelly Bean and above.