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Network analyst firm Streetwave has revealed that they’ve won yet another contract to map 4G and 5G mobile broadband coverage and performance in England, which will this time see them testing along 6,000km of the road network within the four councils covered by the local authority’s Superfast South Yorkshire project.
Streetwave have spent the past two years harnessing waste (bin / refuse) collection trucks to map mobile network coverage and speeds in various parts of the UK (e.g. here, here, here, here and here). In this setup, refuse trucks are installed with several off-the-shelf Smartphones using special software on top, which run continuous network tests (once every 20 metres in rural areas and 5m in urban areas) as the vehicles go around their routes.
The data they collect is then used by local authorities to help identify areas that may require additional intervention in order to improve local mobile coverage and or network capacity. In addition, members of the public have also been given access to some of this data via address-based coverage checkers and interactive maps (example).
The new deal will see mobile coverage quality being benchmarked across every road in each of the associated councils, including Barnsley Council, Sheffield City Council, Doncaster Council and the Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council. Some 1,400,000 people live across this the region and will soon be able to access greater detail on local mobile connectivity.