Any idea how fast your broadband connection is? Do you care? The U.S. Federal Communications Commission does and thinks you might. So it’s decided to help.

And by help, we mean the FCC will give you a way to test your speed using a tool on their Web site here. So now, if you’re paying your ISP to deliver a certain speed, there’s a way to check — using a government site — to see if you’re getting what you paid for.

The FCC has added the tools to the Broadband.gov Web site not only to help users measure their broadband speeds. The site also gives you a button to click for reporting that you don’t have broadband available.

The new test tools are called, respectively,  the Consumer Broadband Test and the Broadband Dead Zone Report to Broadband.gov. Both are free.

The Consumer Broadband Test measures broadband quality indicators like upload and download speeds,  latency and jitter. The test takes about a minute and when the results come back, the report tells you what upload and download speeds, latency and jitter mean. They also report your speed to the FCC — and for that, you’ll have to give them your address, or you won’t be able to use the tools.

What the report won’t tell you is how fast your connection should be or what kind of speed other users get with their broadband connection. It also won’t tell users who don’t know a kilobyte from a megabyte how to tell the difference between the two, or if jitter and latency actually matter. (IT pros won’t have a problem with this, but their users might.)

The tools don’t work with Safari, Opera and Chrome Web browsers. Java’s required to run the test, but if you don’t have it, the site let’s you download it right then and there.

There’s also a mobile version of the app called, somewhat appropriately, “FCC Broadband Test”. This is  the first mobile app released by the FCC, and it’s available (free) through the Apple and Android app stores.

Tags: broadband, connection, FCC, measure, speed