Category Archives: Understanding signal

Using Big Data

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Gabe

While signal testing my way through Omaha a friend in Kansas City, Missouri got in touch and let me know about KC’s City Camp (Un)Conference, happening that weekend at the Kauffman Foundation. She knew I would be in town and … Continue reading →

Posted in Comparing Coverage, Reports, Understanding signal | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Importance of Outliers

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Gabe

My mission roaming the country checking carrier strength so far has taken me to six large metropolitan areas. I love cities for all they have to offer, and for the purpose of broad data collection they are the most useful; … Continue reading →

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Introducing the OpenSignal KnowledgeBase

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Samuel

One of the challenges of becoming involved in any kind of specialised industry is the barrage of acronyms and technical terms which one faces on a daily basis. Of course, when one works in the industry in question they soon … Continue reading →

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Announcing the publication of our global 4G LTE report

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Samuel

We’ve just released our report on the global state of 4G LTE, which we’ve been working on for quite a while. The full report is available here, but we thought we’d summarise a few of our findings in a short … Continue reading →

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Preliminary Results of our Global LTE Speed Test

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Samuel

As the end of 2012 approaches we are able to publish a preliminary set of findings from our global 4G speed test – focussing just on LTE. This test aggregates 130,000 network speed tests run by OpenSignal users across  specific … Continue reading →

Posted in Comparing Coverage, Understanding signal | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Femtocells outnumbering cell towers

Posted on July 25, 2012 by James

MIT Professor Berthold Horn sent us an email with the fascinating observation that femtocells now outnumber cell towers (at least in New England) and with an innovative methodology to highlight areas where cell phone coverage is problematic. He wrote this … Continue reading →

Posted in Open Signal Maps community, Reports, Understanding signal | Leave a comment

What do those bars mean?

Posted on April 18, 2012 by James

OpenSignalMaps user and MIT Professor Berthold Horn has done some digging into the Android source code. He’s found some interesting hints as to what the signal icon in your phone’s status bar means. He noticed a series of functions with … Continue reading →

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New graphs in 1.19!

Posted on February 9, 2012 by James

We’ve added a few things to the graph view to help you understand your signal better, graphics showing: – Average signal – Time spent on each network type (2G/3G/4G) [if your device is wifi only you won;t see this] – … Continue reading →

Posted in App Update, Understanding signal | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Introducing the Forum

Posted on April 15, 2011 by James

http://opensignalmaps.com/forum/ This is the place to go to request features for the app and website, to moan about bugs, or to chat about random signal stuff. We get lots of feedback on the app, and – no matter whether it’s … Continue reading →

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What the… 2.75g???

Posted on February 18, 2011 by James

The widget is out there! Here’s a question which I know is going to come up: what is 2.75G/2.5G? Most people know what 2G and 3G are, or do they… Here’s what you might think: – 2G just does voice, … Continue reading →

Posted in Other, Understanding signal | 10 Comments