Verizon's 'Can You Hear Me Now' Fleet Testing 4G 81
itwbennett writes "On the sidelines of the CTIA trade show in San Diego last week, Verizon showed off one of its test vehicles, a Chevy Tahoe equipped with a variety of phones and mobile data devices. The devices make voice and data calls over the air and are wired up to testing equipment in the back of the truck. The carrier has about 100 such vehicles around the U.S., and testers drive about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) per year while conducting ongoing network tests, said Tom Badger, director of network system performance. One thing Verizon doesn't use: the well-known phrase from its TV commercials."
Re:Can't they get this from the 'handsets?' (Score:4, Informative)
GSM towers will report unexpected drops of calls and various metrics for the quality, however, in my experience, users will often report a subjective version of this which can often be quite skewed. By using actual equipment in the field you will be able to find gray spots (and black spots) in your setup and you will be more able in finding issues with call transfers between cells etc. - and those can often be linked with user complaints (and yes, the call will have some information about users whereabouts in the time of the call, it is however very unreliable for detecting gray/black spots).