Need to know how fast your broadband connection is? The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wants to help you find out.

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 there’s a way to check — using a government site — to see if you’re getting what you paid your ISP for.

The the tools are available on the FCC’s Broadband.gov Web site, which 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. It 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.

There’s also a mobile version of the app called the “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 speeds, FCC, ISP