In a release, Accenture’s CEO and chair Julie Sweet stated:
Acquiring Ookla will enable us to help clients across both commercial and government sectors scale AI securely and create the trusted data foundations required to provide reliable, seamless connectivity that generates value.
Accenture’s current public-sector clients include the US Air Force, the US Social Security Administration, and, recently, the US Department of State.
Speedtest and Downdetector are widely used by people who want to quickly check their internet speed and the operational status of online services, respectively. Downdetector is frequently cited in media coverage about the availability of websites, apps, banks, and other services.
Under Ziff Davis, both products also have business-to-business (B2B) uses. Through Speedtest, for example, Ookla collects, aggregates, and analyzes data for “billions of mobile network samples daily, which measure radio signal levels, network coverage, and availability, and [quality of experience] metrics for a number of connected experiences, such as streaming video, video conferencing, gaming, web browsing, and CDN and cloud provider performance,” Ookla says. Speedtest currently lists telecommunications operators, regulatory and trade bodies, analysts, journalists, and nonprofits among its B2B customers.
Downdetector Explorer, in turn, is a monitoring tool designed to help businesses detect outages. Its customers include streaming platforms, banks, social networks, and communication service providers.
If Accenture’s acquisition goes through, the consulting firm will similarly rely on Speedtest and Downdetector data to advise clients, and individual users would fall under any new privacy policy and other changes Accenture may introduce.
An Accenture spokesperson told Ars Technica that Accenture plans to operate the Ookla “business as it operates today.”
