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Ride Along With a Real Verizon Wireless Tester

Posted by samzenpus on from the everything-on-tv-is-real dept.

jonknee writes "So you're probably sick of the Can you hear me now? ads, but here's a new article about a real-life Verizon Wireless network tester. This guy logs over 3,000 miles a month in a station wagon decked out with over a quarter-million dollars worth of network gear (I dare say the most valuable station wagon ever?). An audio file is linked at the bottom of the article that has a few minute sample of the audio Verizon tests with. It's bizarre!"

14 of 304 comments (clear)

  1. Nice map by tealtalon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can see where my nextel drops me everyday on the way home on 275 talking to my wife. Seriously.
    /me calls verizon.

    1. Re:Nice map by michaelhood · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What is your hang up with people driving while talking on the phone? I can say to a certainty that in 99% of driving conditions (I live in SoCal, we don't have weather), my driving skills aren't affected by a phone conversation. In the other 1%, I stay off the freaking phone.

      There are plenty of people who can't chew gum and drive at the same time, lets worry about the people who can't multitask. Phones just happen to be a common activity, and driving is too, so occasionally they overlap. And so they get martyred as "the only thing that distracts people!".

      I commute outside of LA. I see people driving while reading books, eating cereal, shaving (?!), doing makeup (the worst by far), typing on laptops, etc. Phones are nothing.

  2. Mobile debugging by mrm677 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I used to work at Motorola and we would, at times, have to bring an entire debugging setup out in the field. A van, with the phone test board, workstation, and logic analyzer all hooked up.

  3. My friend does this for Nextel by mo26101 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A friend of mine does the same thing, except he works for Nextel. Needless to say, the job is quite boring.

    1. Re:My friend does this for Nextel by afidel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Dude, it's not even that much driving. I do over half that much just doing my daily commutes for work each month. My father was a salesman with a multistate territory, his best ever was putting 120K miles on a car in 22 months. I believe the leasing angency was in sheer awe of someone that does that much driving =) If you drive every work day (average 20 work days per month) to do 3,000 miles a month you only have to drive 150 miles a day, that is simply nothing.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  4. Your phone by phorm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A lot of that depends on your phone too. I know that my flip-phone doesn't get great reception in the local mall, whereas friends with a standard nokia phone can manage in many places I can't.

  5. Doing something about service.. by inKubus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They've put up a shitload more antennas. It's interesting that people haven't noticed, because they've been camoflauged.

    --
    Cool! Amazing Toys.
    1. Re:Doing something about service.. by silvwolf · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I did some contract work for Sprint when they were building a network in a southern city. Summer job in college really. I'd drive around to cell phone towers and make sure they had power so Sprint techs could come and do whatever they had to do. I remember two sites in particular that I had trouble with.

      The first was on a church's property. Kinda wooded area, pretty big for a church. I drove around the area for a good 10 minutes before calling my boss and asking where the tower was. It was one of those camoflauged trees. I was looking for the damn cell phone tower and couldn't find it!

      Second one was also a church. This time the antenna array was up in the bell tower. I was kinda prepared for that one and could barely see the antennas poking out.

      Another interesting one was out in the middle of a cow field on the side of the highway. There was a mud road out the to the tower. Cows were too busy chowing down to give me a second look.

      I guess these were created out of a catch 22 type situation.. People in rich neighborhoods wanted / needed cell phone service, but weren't willing to put up with the ugly looking tower next to the clubhouse. So the companies that build the towers had to come up with something.

  6. Re:No wonder their service sucks... by spagetti_code · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Just to expand on that a little - this guy is using large car aerials. Most people just use a cellphone with a hidden built-in aerial a couple of inches long.

    Unless they are scaling their results back - they are getting skewed numbers.

  7. I did this as a summer intern back in '95 :) by MikkoApo · · Score: 3, Interesting
    My assignment was to test how well the network handled peak hours in the busiest areas around the city's center. My equipment was a laptop equipped with testing software and a mobile phone. I was supposed to sit in bars (the boss marked the places very specifically) and take notes on how each test went.

    The test took place in the middle of the summer, during probably the hottest two weeks of the whole season and the whole city was totally empty, dead, void of people. People went to the beach, parks and on vacation while I was testing the "peak hours". Most of the tests completed without any errors so it wasn't a really succesful assignment unless you count the nice tan I got from it :)

  8. Ahhh... The good old days by Pedrito · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems like a lifetime ago, but I guess it was only about 11 or so years ago, I worked for a wireless engineering consultant firm in Arlington, VA. Among our many projects, one of the biggest during my time there was designing and building out the first Sprint PCS systems in DC, Seattle, and Portland.

    We didn't own the vans we did drive testing in (the process of checking the signal by driving around with special equipment and software). We rented them. That was fun. We'd rent a nice brand new minivan from Budget or some car rental place and the first thing we'd do is rip out the dash board so we could run power cables to the alternator (I assume that's where they were plugging in. I dealt more with the software side).

    In addition to some fairly expensive equipment, some of which our company designed, we also had specially modded PCS phones that, with a serial cable, would provide signal strength and other information to the computers.

    We'd have maybe 3 or 4 laptops, each with a phone and GPS attached, and then we'd just go cruising around town recording signal strength, intereference measurements, and so on.

    And if it wasn't just plain old geeky fun, the young engineers involved were simply a great group of people and we had a blast doing it together. And somehow we usually managed to get the minivans put back together well enough that we never got sued.

    Thanks for the memories. I haven't thought about the old drive testing days in quite some time.

    1. Re:Ahhh... The good old days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The cables to the dash went to the electronic speedometer feed so the dead-reckoning gear could keep track of where we were when the GPS flaked out... Remember having to calibrate by driving in circles?
      -Lee

  9. Best wardriving vehicle? guess again... by mrqcho · · Score: 2, Interesting

    WarDrive Van

    Now that's what I call geek!

  10. Re:sigh - I've had a bad day... by pokka · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FFS, *somebody* buy the slashdot editors a copy of StyleWriter.

    Ha, I know this is off-topic, but I find it hilarious that their site has an example image of a document that's been "fixed" by StyleWriter. One of the sentences has been corrected to "I assume you'll dealing this soon..." Are you sure the slashdot editors don't already have a copy? :)