T-Mobile unveiled on Monday a new coverage map that takes data straight from its customers, giving existing and potential customers a more accurate picture of the strength of network coverage in their area.
In a blog post, T-Mobile chief technology officer Neville Ray said mobile carriers have created their coverage maps using "predictive coverage estimations," which are, as the name implies, only estimates that are not always accurate and up-to-date.
T-Mobile's new coverage map, Ray said, is "the industry's first and only crowdsourced, customer-verified network coverage map," leveraging advanced new technologies that allow the Un-carrier to gather real-time network data from customers and put it on a map.
"There's a massive amount of information flowing around on these networks about where coverage is good, bad, or indifferent and where speeds are good, bad, or indifferent," Ray said in an interview with USA Today. "And we're going to put all of that information out on the web in a completely transparent way. It'll be a cold day in hell before Big 2 (Verizon and AT&T) do this."
The map will show customers exactly which parts of the U.S. have coverage for T-Mobile's 4G LTE, 4G, and 3G networks and which parts have no coverage or have coverage for T-Mobile's partners.
Customers can receive granular coverage data down to the last block of their homes or offices, since T-Mobile breaks down coverage data into "bins" of 100 x 100 meters. To check out coverage data in their area, users can simply enter the name of their town, their zip code, or their street address, and T-Mobile will zero in on that specific location.
It will also feature Verified Coverage areas to indicate that majority of the data in that area is collected from T-Mobile customers. T-Mobile will also be pulling data from third-party sources, such as big data firm Inrix and SpeedTest.net, to validate its own data collected from 200 million customer usage points every day. So far, T-Mobile has collected 15 billion data points and is expected to collect even more as the maps get updated twice every month.
Ray is aware that a real-time coverage map will also expose T-Mobile's own network weaknesses, although ultimately what benefits the customer will benefit the Un-carrier as well.
"What we're trying to do now is expose what we believe is really important for the customer around that buying decision on coverage," Ray said. "We're not trying to hoodwink people."
Photo: Mike Mozart | Flickr
