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Verizon's Wireless Road Warriors

Posted by michael on from the surprisingly-mediocre dept.

Joey Patterson writes "CNN has an article about how Verizon Wireless uses technicians who drive around the country in station wagons filled with wireless gear to look for holes in the company's cell phone network and analyze the service of its competitors. This program isn't cheap (the cars cost $270,000 and $15/mile to operate), but it definitely helps Verizon find out where they stand relative to their competitors."

2 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. AT&T does it too by craybob · · Score: 4, Informative

    AT&T does the same thing, I've known a guy that does that for about 2 years now.

  2. Re:My VZW experience by weave · · Score: 3, Informative
    Hmm, there's about 50 miles of dead space along US 93 between Wickenburg and I-40 in Arizona. I travel that road about once or twice a year with my friend on road trips. As well as my Verizon phone, I also have a Nextel and my friend has Sprint PCS. At different points, there were signals on each of the three sets. I was surprised the Nextel did so well personally. Sprint was the worse of the three.

    And this didn't cost anything, just monitoring whether it could receive signals. I admit it doesn't give a full analysis of quality, drop rate, etc, but a lousy signal is better than no signal and that road (being the best road between Phoenix and Las Vegas) gets a lot of travel. I'm surprised cell service sucks so bad along it.

    Speaking of Sprint PCS, I've always considered their "100% digital ads" to be something to be ashamed of, not brag about. If I can't get a digital signal, I'd much rather have an old-fashined A or B side analog network to fall back on....