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Ride Along With a Real Verizon Wireless Tester
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!"
Wardriving.
Best, wardriving vehicle, ever.
I can see where my nextel drops me everyday on the way home on 275 talking to my wife. Seriously.
/me calls verizon.
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.
A friend of mine does the same thing, except he works for Nextel. Needless to say, the job is quite boring.
Although, you can't pick up chicks in a tank.
Yeah, but does the wireless tester have SPINNERS on it?
I hate those things....
All that equipment but the guy really hoped that MTV and Xzibit would Pimp His Ride!!!
...the tester gets a skewed view because he uses equipment worth 3/4 million whereas real users have to use a crappy phone that costs a few hundred.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
"Dropped calls for Verizon Wireless are pretty rare these days, with some months of testing seeing none."
Well that's all fine and dandy for them. Unfortunately, I get a dropped call or two each week, in an area Verizon advertises as being completely covered.
They've put up a shitload more antennas. It's interesting that people haven't noticed, because they've been camoflauged.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
Um... are you sure its a good idea to publish a pic with the license plate number of a car carrying $750 000 worth of stuffZors?
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
I hope that wagon's got airbags, because the driver's gotta be drinking heavily during his job.
Extension: AMR Program and/or Extension Function Company Adaptive Multi-Rate Codec Specific Notes Speech encoding format used in GSM telephony. MIME Type What's This? File Classification Associated Links * Player * Background Paper Identifying Characters: Hex: 23 21 41 4D 52 0A 34 ASCII: #!AMR.4
Nothing for you to see here, Please move along.
One sad thing about the U.S. cell system is that all there are so many incompatible cell protocols and systems. You get a phone that handles 3 or 4 different protocols, you worry about "roaming" charges -- and you still often find yourself in places where your particular provider just can't serve you.
The Europeans did the right thing when they agreed that all their providers would have to use GSM, so everybody's phone would work with everybody's network. U.S. providers complain that GSM doesn't use bandwidth efficiently. But from the consumer point of view, their hodge-podge of GSM alternates is really inefficient.
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.
It paid $15/hour, which I thought was great. I mean, all I have to do is drive, right? Well, when hours are from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., and you factor in the potential cost of meals and lodging... Not to mention the fact that sitting in one precise position for that long is KILLER... I drove 550 miles in one day, and didn't actually end up going anywhere, because we just drove every road back and forth to cover an entire area. I don't think I was ever more than 30 miles from where I started. It's really crippling, psychologically, to be all "Wow, I can't wait 'til we get there!" because you feel like you're on a road trip. And then you realize... "Oh yeah... I'm just gonna end up back where I started." After a while, it was pretty enjoyable though, because I went nuts and was entertained by everything I saw on the side of the road.
Didn't really learn much as far as wireless goes, though I talked to the engineer a lot... Long car trips not to. Here's what I don't get...
Sprint wants to test their cell reception and compare it to their competitors... They hire company A to do it. Company A calls Company B for staffing. Company A pays Company B, and Engineer is hired, and paid by Company B. Company B then calls Company C to inquire about a drive. Company B pays Company C, and Company C find and pays the drive. Turning in hours was maddening. And think about how freaking expensive these drives are when you figure that everyone is making a profit in that multi-tiered platform. Sheesh!
P.S... Normally, the signs say "Watch For Children". But there were a few in the Blacksburg area I think that said "Watch Children". I was quite disappointed when I didn't see kids on the side of the road twirling plates, juggling chainsaws, and performing magic tricks for my entertainment.
I'd like to see them air a commercial from the point of view of the poor guy stuck at his desk all day...
"....yes....yes....yes....yes....yes....yes...."
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?