You know those coverage maps that mobile service providers create? The ones that tell you that, yes, there’s blanket 3G coverage in your favourite holiday destination, but when you get there you discover mean ‘slight 3G coverage for people sitting on top of their chimneys facing west under optimal stratospheric conditions’?
Well… it strikes me that, now phones have accessible GPS data, we shouldn’t need to rely on these particular bits of marketing propaganda. Somebody could write a phone app which periodically captures details of the signal and the phone’s location, and uploads them to a service which creates a map showing the true picture. Imagine you could look at your movements over a month or two and discover which operator would really provide you personally with the best service. If you were running the application, the system could even tell you that automatically! (Which would be a good way to get the data-gathering mechanism widely adopted).
Has anyone done this? I might write it up as a student project proposal…
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