Accenture to acquire Ookla

https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2026/accenture-to-acquire-ookla-to-strengthen-network-intelligence-and-experience-with-data-and-ai-for-enterprises

by Garbage • 2 months ago

325 177 2 months ago

newsroom.accenture.com

https://www.theverge.com/tech/889234/downdetector-ookla-spee..., https://archive.ph/FR8ND

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/03/downd...

coreyh14444• 2 months ago

Why tho?

folkrav• 2 months ago

It's almost always user data these days, so probably that.

ranger_danger• 2 months ago

Maybe the owners were ready to cash out and move on with life?

IshKebab3• 2 months ago

That seems like a lot for name recognition. I bet you could rebuild their technology for like $20m at the most, and buy 100% market share for like $100m easy. Unless they have some other assets other than the obvious?

pyvpx2• 2 months ago

It takes more than money to supplant the name brand that every ISP games and every front line support worker uses by name

IshKebab3• 2 months ago

More than $1bn?? I don't buy it.

cyanydeez• 2 months ago

selling peoples ip addres for some reason along with whatever privacy invasion tech they have.

jedberg3• 2 months ago

Fast.com has existed for 15 years yet isn't nearly as popular. It's easy to build a new speed test, but much harder to get people to use it.

Downdetector wins because of SEO. Most people don't get there directly, they google for "is $x down" and then get sent to downdecetor. Which from my understanding works by simply showing you how many people came to their site with those search terms. They don't actually check the sites.

tcdent• 2 months ago

Fast is a Netflix product so the fact that you've even heard of it is in direct relation to the weight of the brand that launched it.

speedtest.net has been the first search result on Google for "speed test" for decades. Partly the boost of domain SEO and partly the boost of it being an effective exit node for searches for that term for that long.

(Nobody searches "ookla" and nobody is going to search your tier-3 .com)

wartywhoa23• 2 months ago

Isn't Speedtest's huge dataset of Internet speeds mapped to time, location and IP address, as well as data on VPN usage (a user checks the speed of his/her direct connection then turns VPN on and checks over that too, all within the same session) such an asset?

I doubt they didn't collect all of that.

P.S. Now marry that huge dataset with services that Accenture provides, among others:

"In February 2025, Vice News spoke to a former Accenture employee under the condition of anonymity. His project on the WhatsApp team for Meta required him to sift through images and decide whether or not they depicted child sexual abuse, which he coped with "through a lot of substance abuse". The former employee claimed to have witnessed multiple missed opportunities to protect children, and alleged that one colleague had previously been arrested for possessing child abuse materials. In a statement, Accenture said they are "committed to helping companies keep their platforms safe through services such as content, advertising, and compliance reviews."¹

¹: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accenture

IshKebab3• 2 months ago

Hard to see how that is remotely worth $1bn.

progforlyfe2• 2 months ago

that's nuts, unless I'm missing something, it doesn't seem like those products are that mind blowingly complex... wow. Makes we want to try building my own for the hell of it.

Downdetector in fact just seems to be a website catalog with essentially a guestbook and hit counter...

kingleopold• 2 months ago

dont miss it, its almost all about users and revenue not how complex or simple product is.

fontain• 2 months ago

Ookla has huge amounts of data, speedtest’s software is integrated into networks and used by hundreds of millions of users, they have the most comprehensive information about internet connections. You can recreate the software but you can’t recreate the data without decades of integration into what seems like every network.

https://www.ookla.com/ You can see an overview of the data they collect and sell on the corporate website

rozenmd• 2 months ago

the best part is Downdetector is inaccurate as hell - if AWS is genuinely down, folks get curious and search other providers, causing Downdetector to mark them as down too

tjoff2• 2 months ago

Just searching surely does not mark them as down?

Seattle3503• 2 months ago

The valuation must be outside of the tech. Are there relationships or contracts Accenture is getting access to?

thefourthchime• 2 months ago

it must be

awakeasleep• 2 months ago

or overlapping board members who are essentially paying themselves

cortesoft3• 2 months ago

Clearly. They are buying all the servers that are already imbedded in ISP networks.

adammarples• 2 months ago

You don't pay to use ookla speed test, so your data is the product. That data gets sold.

dyauspitr• 2 months ago

The valuation is the name recognition and that that’s where people go to do those things

eddythompson804• 2 months ago

Of course they are not complex. They do have a network effect though. If you go to your local ISP and say “hey, my 500mbps plan is only doing 100mbps on Speedtest.net”, they’ll “fix it” (usually by working with Ookla to put an edge endpoint on their network)

If you tell the “hey frankyspeeddetect.com isn’t doing my 500mbps” they’ll tell you to it’s an issue with that random website. ISPs and services reach out to Ookla to onboard with them because they have a network effect/mindshare of whatever you wanna call it

fragmede3• 2 months ago

http://speed.cloudflare.com is a bit harder to argue with though.

thayne• 2 months ago

When I used a major cable ISP, often my connection seemed slow, so I'd go to speedtest.com. The speedtest would be fine... and then I would magically have faster network performance again.

It happened enough times that I'm suspicious the ISP had some way to detect if you run a speedtest, and then prioritized traffic to that customer.

guessbest• 2 months ago

That's a lot of money just for network topography, but may someone let them in and it has a whole map of an otherwise hidden or inaccessible network.

kobalsky• 2 months ago

speedtest has a lot of volunteers hosting local servers, which you need to do a good last mile speed test.

that capilarity is not something you can achieve overnight.

maccard• 2 months ago

You’re not paying for the tech, you’re paying for the name and the users. Speedyest claims 40m unique users per month.

sowbug• 2 months ago

thefacebook.com was developed in a few days, too. The value was never in the code.

UqWBcuFx6NV4r2• 2 months ago

The fact that you think that the code is all that material here is exactly why you aren’t the person to be doing this. Go right ahead.

ZIR SV culture has built multiple generations of nerds that think that they can just effortlessly become billionaires. Ridiculous brain rot.

jpalomaki• 2 months ago

"By integrating Ookla’s data products, including Speedtest®, Downdetector®, Ekahau®, and RootMetrics®, Accenture will help Communications Service Providers (CSPs), hyperscalers, and enterprises optimize the mission-critical Wi-Fi and 5G networks that power their digital core. [...] Ookla’s data platform is anchored by more than 250 million consumer-initiated tests per month, complemented by controlled drive, walk, and embedded testing options"[1]

[1] https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/2026/accenture-to-acquir...

simonw• 2 months ago

Is there some legal reason to scatter announcements with that many ® symbols, or do they just do it for style reasons / because they think it makes the announcement look more impressive?

conception• 2 months ago

Legal. Gotta protect your trademarks.

kube-system• 2 months ago

Using the symbol allows them greater protection under the Lanham act, because it counts as “notice” that the mark is registered.

Without it, it limits your ability to recover damages from infringement.

trollbridge• 2 months ago

When you are making the absurd case you’ve trademarked “speed test”, yes, you have to take pains to mark it.

notatoad• 2 months ago

i'm guessing that part of accenture's consulting business is helping people navigate the trademark registration process. so they've got to hype up the ®.

MaciejR• 2 months ago

And now every SLA that Accenture is held to for uptime suddenly will never be breached…

yokoprime• 2 months ago

may i suggest nettfart.no by the norwegian government as an alternative ? at least the name is fun

joshuat• 2 months ago

fast.com is my go-to in the rare case I need to check network speed these days

taberiand• 2 months ago

We used fast.com to speed test our new office internet connection and the next day got an irate email from corporate (who had argued we didn't need the new connection) about "watching Netflix all day". I imagine some C-level thought they had a real gotcha! moment until I showed them the site.

cseleborg2• 2 months ago

I read a while ago that certain ISPs will optimize the traffic to Netflix's servers, and so when you run fast.com (which is my default, by the way), you get your Internet speed for watching Netflix, but not necessarily for other things.

vinay427• 2 months ago

While neat that a government operates this, I’m not sure it’s a viable alternative for most users given that the servers are AFAIK all in Norway. For example, the latency from my network was 150-200ms (compared to 6ms for the Speedtest.net server) and the speed test results appear less consistent than they may be in/near Norway.

BoingBoomTschak2• 2 months ago

I recommend https://speed.cloudflare.com/ personally.

LelouBil• 2 months ago

I like the fact that it shows packet loss

firefax2• 2 months ago

why is it named this? i'm guessing "fart" means something different in your language :-)

pmdr• 2 months ago

"speed" in Swedish and Norwegian. Probably Danish as well.

rswail• 2 months ago

Wait until you find out what they call "closed".

Mordisquitos• 2 months ago

It's not the net fart that kills your connection, it is the server smell.

amarcheschi• 2 months ago

There is also the Italian one, AFAIK you can use this as an official tool to check whether your speed is at least the minimum speed that should be provided by contract.

I don't know whether it pings to italy even outside italy/eu

https://misurainternet.it/misura-speedtest/?speedtest=inizia

teddyh• 2 months ago

For Swedish users: <https://www.bredbandskollen.se/>

usr1106• 2 months ago

Finnish https://bittimittari.fi/en/measurement

functionmouse• 2 months ago

use https://speedof.me

ck2• 2 months ago

https://speed.cloudflare.com

amelius2• 2 months ago

Yes.

forcer4• 2 months ago

I am not sure why this old news is surfacing here today but I can give my 2 cents, since I sold speedchecker.com last year and were directly competing with Ookla.

The main business is selling the data. You use Speedtest.net to troubleshoot your connection but metrics captured with the test alongside location data give telcos invaluable insights on where they should improve their networks. Telcos pay 6 figures annually for this data and we have a few hundreds of of those big MNOs globally. This market is pretty big. Accenture is in trouble with their main consulting business due to AI so acquiring data business is one of the smart strategies they can implement to stay relevant.

To all commenters who think they can code it over the weekend, yes you are right. I coded my first speed checker over the weekend in 2008 but it took me 18 years to grow the user base , figure out entreprise sales strategy and exit. Its not easy as it seems.

saidnooneever• 2 months ago

thanks fornthe insights. inthought it was a wopping number but this makes totally sense. never realised this was gather valuable data for network operators. cool insights!

AndrewKemendo• 2 months ago

Why did you sell it?

forcer4• 2 months ago

Because I got a good offer :)

cortesoft3• 2 months ago

Money without having to do more work > money that you have to keep working for

andix2• 2 months ago

The partner network of Speedtest is also impressive. I don't know how many speed tests they need to handle in parallel, but usually it's always enough to do speed tests up to 5-10 Gbit/s. With more and more fiber connections also latency becomes very relevant. Otherwise the tests would be meaningless. Speedtest manages to measure less than 1ms latency on my fiber connection.

forcer4• 2 months ago

Once you have a good amount of users testing, its not that difficult to get free servers from the ISPs. The secret is that on-net servers show testers better performance than off-net so every ISP wants to contribute the speed test server. If they dont do it they are shooting themselves in the foot by routing their traffic to competitor networks and getting test results behind their peers.

Whats even worst then your competitors can claim awards for the Fastest ISP and your marketing people are furious!

frankdenbow• 2 months ago

what was the point where you had enough data to make it worthwhile for telcos?

forcer4• 2 months ago

I would say if you can reach 1% of the population in a given country every month then you are starting to be interesting for the telcos.

Melatonic• 2 months ago

Any recommendations for similar tools to check network metrics other than speed ? Used to be a few free ones but would be nice to have an easy one to use

esseph2• 2 months ago

Most will show you speed / latency / packetloss with the toggleable option for multi-single threaded.

What would you like to see?

cortesoft3• 2 months ago

As someone who worked at a CDN for years, I imagine the code is the easiest technical part. Managing the infrastructure, network connectivity, load balancing, and capacity planning would be the harder parts, outside of the sales and marketing bits.

If you don’t get all of those parts right, you are going to end up measuring your own bandwidth rather than the client’s.

ksec• 2 months ago

This.

The website, and backend code for the test. 10% of the software work. Which is what everyone seems to think.

The code to managing the infrastructure, network connectivity, load balancing, and capacity planning is the 90% of the software part. But even then it is only 10% of the technical thing.

Getting all the ISP onboard to have your server in their network / exchange and to deal with you, takes more time and effort then all the software part. But even then it is only 10% of the project.

The remaining 90%? Non technical part for Sales and Marketing and getting user traction.

To put that into perspective, the website can be done in a weekend was only 0.01% of the work.

Raed667• 2 months ago

How come ISPs aren't providing that data internally from observing their own traffic ?

k2enemy• 2 months ago

I'm sure they do, but data about the speeds of other ISPs is also valuable.

hocuspocus• 2 months ago

I'm not sure about broadband data, as it can't be that useful. However on the mobile side, it's fairly valuable as a mobile app can collect A-GPS location and sensor telemetry that are unknown to the MNO otherwise.

contingencies• 2 months ago

Just wanted to say congratulations!

_fizz_buzz_• 2 months ago

When you first built it, were you aware there was market for the data? Or was this something you discovered afterwards? It makes sense, but I wouldn’t have guessed it.

athrowaway3z• 2 months ago

Did you ever fear that any big player like Google, Apple, Valve (though fewer mobiles), Meta, OpenAI (nowadays), etc decide to get involved?

qsxfthnkp23223• 2 months ago

Apple has their own internal speed app due to privacy concerns.

arikrahman4• 2 months ago

All it takes to defeat the business model is https://openspeedtest.com/

jedberg3• 2 months ago

That test was totally inaccurate for me. It got the download right but upload was only 1/12 of my rated speed and 1/12 of what all the other tests (and my actual experience) tell me.

mbesto4• 2 months ago

Or https://speed.cloudflare.com/

UqWBcuFx6NV4r2• 2 months ago

evidently putting “open” in the name of a website doesn’t suddenly make it not-bad.

dgellow• 2 months ago

MNOs => Mobile Network Operators

altairprime• 2 months ago

It’s less than ninety days old and it isn’t (2025), so I wouldn’t consider this as ‘old news’ yet. TIL, for example! But if you think it’s a dupe/repost and should be squashed, email the mods a link to both this and the prior post so they can evaluate.

rajveerb2• 2 months ago

@forcer would love to know how you "grow the user base , figure out entreprise sales strategy and exit"

steve_adams_862• 2 months ago

Apparently it takes roughly the same amount of time as raising a child

mbesto4• 2 months ago

but it took me 18 years to grow the user base , figure out entreprise sales strategy and exit.

The audience here has never wanted to admit that the codebase doesn't really matter. Now that codebases can be created in a weekend, people are opening their eyes to this sentiment - the hard part is the sales, the code is easy.

themafia• 2 months ago

The audience here has never wanted to admit that the codebase doesn't really matter.

Are we talking about speed testing websites or the code that controls space vehicles? Perhaps extreme generalities do not provide useful insights.

Now that codebases can be created in a weekend

Now that corporations are whitewashing copyright off of code so you can steal it without conscience.

people are opening their eyes to this sentiment

Code is the product. Engineering is the discipline. That you can achieve high sales without good engineering is not a new idea. That it only provides short term benefits and leaves you irrelevant in the long term is the actual sentiment.

the code is easy.

Coding has been easy since Perl was released. Knowing _what_ to code is the problem.

BoggleOhYeah• 2 months ago

I'm not sure anyone was operating under the idea that a speed test website's code was the hard part.

elxr• 2 months ago

Great code is still not easy. Choosing the right stack/libraries/billing and getting everything to work together (for cheap) is still something barely 10% of devs can actually realistically do.

Sales is hard, yeah, but look at everyone claiming to be building something amazing and it ends up 9 months behind schedule or just being an buggy, untested version of something that already exists in the market.

anotherevan2• 2 months ago

the codebase doesn't really matter

Sigh.

I’m sure the viewpoint from being in mergers and acquisitions is quite different (and to me, often comes across as quite callow). I’ve been a software developer for 35 years (closer to 45 if you include my pre-professional life, aka adolescence) and have deliberately stayed “on the tools” in my career with working in codebases and product development as I’ve found that is where I am happiest and can make the best contribution, rather than move up the managerial ladder to my level of incompetence, to quote Peter.

To create a successful product in IT, or any industry really, it takes a lot of different skills, facets and (often competing) priorities. And those priorities do change over time. I’m sure by the time a product or service crosses your desk, the codebase quality is not as big of a priority. Earlier in the life cycle a shit codebase makes for a shit product that is a lot harder to grow and maintain — so much so that most of them have probably folded before they reached the stage of looking to be merged or acquired. I’ve dabbled in sound mixing for live performance and when training others I’ve mentioned the fact that it very hard to make a bad singer or musician sound good, but very easy to make a good singer or musician sound bad. Same goes for trying to make what would otherwise have been a good product or service with a bad codebase. That’s really hard and creates a hell of a lot more work for every part of the business.

I’ve had sales people tell me to my face that they are the most important part of the business and the actual product or services is not that important. And in my more callow stages of life experience I’m pretty sure I’ve reciprocated with words like useless and parasitic, and that I could replace them with a small bash script. But in reality what we all do is important to the complex endeavour of developing and maintaining a successful product or service. The existential threat of AI is moving up the ladder of incompetence and changing the face of what we do. It may even jump a few rungs in the process. But it’s not there just yet. Keep making good sales, keep making good mergers, good products, good acquisitions, good services, and good codebases.

— No tokens were harmed in the production of this comment. —

Gigachad• 2 months ago

Most of them can't. It's just a few products like speed testers and social media that are at least surface level easy. You can't vibe code up a triple A quality game in a weekend.

taneq• 2 months ago

I coded my first speed checker over the weekend in 2008 but it took me 18 years to grow the user base , figure out entreprise sales strategy and exit. Its not easy as it seems.

The biggest surprise (imo) when you start a business is how little of running a business is actually directly about the product. Having a product is essential, sure, and having a good product is nice, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

glaslong• 2 months ago

To all commenters who think they can code it over the weekend, yes you are right... but it took me 18 years to grow the user base

I should get this printed and framed

aryehof• 2 months ago

Accenture is in trouble with their main consulting business due to AI

Is this something being seen across all outsourcers like Accenture, Wipro, Infosys etc?

brikym• 2 months ago

Are you able to share the details on how it was valued? Was it N times revenue or anything like that? I have tried to value a property several parties are interested in and found it quite mysterious.

iugtmkbdfil8342• 2 months ago

Thank you for your service ( the product was/is -- haven't used in a while -- useful ).

I think this is the part that people do not appreciate. Sometimes it genuinely it is not the difficulty of the task from a pure programming perspective, but 1) getting the users and 2) getting people to pay for the service and 3) getting the right people to sign off on that.

It is very similar in banking. The products themselves are not super hard ( though the challenges are real ), buy just getting to talk to the right people is a hassle.

8cvor6j844qw_d6• 2 months ago

ISP seems to give higher network priority to Ookla so I'm not sure how useful it is compared to actual experience.

NetMageSCW2• 2 months ago

Like all speed tests it should be considered the maximum you can achieve.

PunchyHamster• 2 months ago

Huh, interesting, I thought ISP would get enough metrics from their own devices

ricardobayes• 2 months ago

Telcos wanting to improve their networks is news to me. I always thought providing the bare minimum is basically their business model.

zulban• 2 months ago

Providing the bare minimum when you're not is improving. ;)

hbwang2076• 2 months ago

Solid point on the infrastructure testing gap. Accenture/ookla collaboration is interesting - real world speed data meets enterprise rollout.

iambateman• 2 months ago

I would never have had SpeedTest on my board of unicorns…that’s an unbelievable sale price. To all the agents who negotiated that deal, my hat is off to you.

esseph2• 2 months ago

They are embedded in several points in many, many networks all over the world. They get real-world metrics, sometimes live as events are happening. And they don't own most of this infra, it's hosted voluntarily inside service provider and corporate networks.

1a527dd5• 2 months ago

Big fan of https://speedtest.aa.net.uk

system2• 2 months ago

Terrible domain name.

throwawa14223• 2 months ago

May it fail and take Accenture with them.

gschizas• 2 months ago

Accenture is more resilient than cockroaches.

throwaway81523• 2 months ago

Not THAT Ookla, darn it. http://www.ooklathemok.com/

dhruvarora013• 2 months ago

Worked there for half a decade and helped a little on this deal but exited right before.

Like another commenter pointed out, the deal is a data acquisition. Ookla is multimillion dollar business thanks to its awards and data programs with almost every telco a customer. Accenture was already a competitor thanks to their Umlaut acquisition

For most consumers, Ookla = Speedtest but there’s a lot more beneath the surface. Ookla owns a drive-testing firm, Downdetector (consumer based outage reporting) and a thriving SDK & server network. Most of the data comes via background tests and embedded SDK tests.

gjmveloso• 2 months ago

I don’t think I would trust Downdetector in the hands of a company that its main business is consulting some of the same business to assess.

Imagine a large Accenture business being down. Would they provide that evidence even when that could harm their own SLA commitments with their clients?

I would trust Datadog more with https://updog.ai/

shevy-java• 2 months ago

There is something I never liked about Crapcenture - it's corporate culture is so weird and almost cult-like. There is no doubt they are successful but I question whether that model should even exist in the first place.

FlippieFinance• 2 months ago

I really hope they don't change the interface of the speedchecker because it's so clean rn

Accenture to acquire Ookla

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