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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

• Confirmed Confirmed (Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday January 18 2019, @04:03PM (1 child)

  by Phoenix666 (552) on Friday January 18 2019, @04:03PM (#788274) Journal

  I am glad that the State of Vermont did this. I take a lot of roadtrips and have often thought the coverage was not what the cellphone company maps promised it to be. But it's anecdotal, etc., so I left it at that.

  In this case it was a state government employee who undertook this project, but citizen gadflies ought to also. The government justifies a lot of its policies with data handed it by self-interested corporations, such that the outcome they want is assured. Rarely is that dynamic exposed by the corporate media.

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  Washington DC delenda est.

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• Re:Confirmed (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday January 26 2019, @06:45PM

  by fustakrakich (6150) on Saturday January 26 2019, @06:45PM (#792388) Journal

  I think it would be cool to make our data worthless to BigCorp by giving it all away to the government openly and freely, location, medical, everything, demanding open access (to our own) on demand. It can't hurt. They already have everything. Let's make it transparent. We have to be just as active as they are. Make the government use OUR data, the peoples data! This is how we can own the means of production. Let's turn the government into a big giant "Consumer Reports" magazine, with lawyers, guns, and money!

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  La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..

  Parent