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Man Drives 6,000 Miles to Prove Uncle Sam's Cellphone Coverage Maps are Wrong

posted by mrpg on Friday January 18 2019, @10:34AM   
from the in-six-weeks dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Man drives 6,000 miles to prove Uncle Sam's cellphone coverage maps are wrong – and, boy, did he manage it

A Vermont state employee drove 6,000 miles in six weeks to prove that the cellular coverage maps from the US government suck – and was wildly successful.

In fact not only did he prove conclusively that reports delivered to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by mobile operators aren't worth the paper they're printed on but also swung a spotlight on just how bad bureaucracy can get when it comes to Washington DC.

Corey Chase, a telecommunications infrastructure specialist who works for the Vermont Department of Public Service (PSD), undertook the monster road trip with some specialized equipment: six phones, each connected to a different mobile nework, and a custom piece of software, G-NetTrack, that carried out constant measurements of download speeds.

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Original Submission

• Re:TL;DR (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday January 18 2019, @07:55PM

  by krishnoid (1156) on Friday January 18 2019, @07:55PM (#788387)

  "In the meantime, we recommend you:

  • provide an easily-consumed report of your findings,
  • make sure all the news outlets know about this,
  • request cell phone users who have had coverage problems to correlate their experience with your maps
  • write up some petitions customized to state-specific lack-of-coverage maps
  • request the users sign their names on a number of petitions, grouped by geographic area
  • have a few follow-up petitions for good measure, and
  • request the news outlets also plan for some follow-ups

  You'll then be well prepared to thrash us properly and repeatedly once we open back up. Thank you for your correspondence."

  Parent

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