T-Mobile's New Consumer Aid

The mobile phone carrier has one-upped the competition with street-level maps of its coverage.

It's not perfect, however. I zoomed in on my house, where the signal strength is allegedly "great" by T-Mobile's account. I can assure you -- and the company -- that this is not true. The phone works, but the signal is, at best, adequate.

Still, this Web service punches a hole in a stonewall the mobile carriers have insisted on erecting for years. They've said maps of coverage and signal strength are "trade secrets" -- a shabby way of treating customers and potential customers.

T-Mobile deserves some credit here.

Comments

[Joe Buck]

Maybe "great" means "the phone works" and "fair" means "you're out of luck"?

[Dan Bricklin]

Looking at it for me, it is close to what I've seen around my home, etc., but it's ***such*** an improvement over the rough map they had before it's wonderful.

Is this more fallout from stuff like Keyhole (now that it's part of Google)? We expect to find out personal-level stuff. I routinely look at the up-to-the-hour radar weather maps to see exactly where the rain is compared to my house. I routinely look at the area (using Keyhole/Earthviewer and now Google Maps) where I'm going.

Of course, people will expect news to be at this granularity, too. Down to the elementary school PTA level or below. When will ***my*** block have the streets cleaned or trees trimed?

As you did, Dan, I commend T-Mobile for treating its customers this way (though I've always liked their customer support anyway). I hope it's another step towards being even more customer centric, treating the cell phone as a necessity to be exploited as best possible by the users and not a monopoly to be exploited by the carriers taking advantage of the customers.

-Dan Bricklin

[Flip]

I think T-Mobile UNDERSTATES their signal strength.

For example, I was on Angel Island in the San Francisco bay near Tiburon. The map show very low coverage for the island. Yet when I was there my phone showed a signal strength of 3 bars and I was surfing the web over GPRS at a normal speed.

[Aeolus]

Where I live, the T-mobile map is dead on accurate. I really have to applaud them for putting this up. It shows some real chinks in their coverage, but it's a first in honesty for cell phone companies.

[jerry]

Yes, they do deserve credit for this. It's actually a very interesting map. Near me in North Phoenix, in a very flat area of town there is a gaping hole of NO coverage. Not poor, but NO coverage. That's very enlightening and makes me want to see the other maps even more.

This truly puts the lie to Verizon's "Can you hear me now."

[Bob Rosenberg]

Very interesting!

I entered a street address, the city name, the state name, and the ZIP code.

T-Mobile's website responded with, "Insufficient address information to GeoCode by."

Hello, T-Mobile, I'm open to suggestions.

[Anonymous]

Looks like their street maps aren't too recent.

I tried looking up my house. I found that the street I live in wasn't on
their map. The house and the street is about two years old.

I had put in the name of a nearby street that wasn't recently built and
scrolled over to my house. I'd imagine you can put only the city name
and zoom in.

The map shows fair at my house. I get 1-2 bars on my phone from T-mobile
and I get dropped words when making phone calls from home.

The city-level maps seems pretty interesting.

[Bob Rosenberg]

Well, maybe their maps aren't so recent. The building at the address I entered was built in 1964. So, if they haven't updated their maps since Barry Goldwater ran for President, I guess I can't check it out!

[ irony ]
On the other hand, I suppose Phoenix hasn't changed much in the last forty years.
[ / irony ]

[Dan Gillmor]

My zip code didn't work, either, when I tried it out... Ouch.

But I agree with Dan B that T-Mobile does have good customer service.