Every cell phone user knows those where those dreaded dead spots are — locations where your carrier’s signal fails, calls drop and data slows to a crawl.
And it doesn’t matter which carrier you use; they all have their weak spots. When you sign up for service, you’ve got to cross your fingers and hope that the signal’s decent at your primary locations, such as where you live and work.
But if you’re an iPhone user considering changing wireless providers, you’ve now got a way to check the service quality of competitors. A new iOS app called CarrierCompare looks at the signals of the three major U.S. carriers who offer the iPhone (AT&T, Sprint and Verizon) at your current location. (Thanks to frequent TechBlog commenter Dave Small for pointing this out!)
This free app is very simple. Launch the app, touch the “Tap to Compare” screen and the program begins sniffing for signals.
When the comparison is complete, you’re shown the quality of the network for AT&T, Sprint and Verizon based on network response, signal strength and download speeds. What’s interesting is that you’ll often get different results when you run the app, which makes sense. Cell tower congestion and signal interference, which affect connection quality, can change by the second.
[A clarification: The data shown for carriers other than the one you’re using comes from other people in the area using the app. Your AT&T GSM phone can’t see the signals for Spring and Verizon’s CDMA network, and vice versa.]
For example, here are two tests done about 30 seconds apart at my home in the Montrose area of Houston.
Sometimes the app won’t be able to gather enough information and will report a carrier’s scan as “Incomplete”.
Here are two comparisons I did at the Tellepsen Family YMCA in downtown Houston.
The key is to do multiple scans over several time periods at the same location. After a while a picture emerges. I’ve got pretty good service at home, it turns out, and generally fair service at the gym, where, as I wrote last week, I rely on my iPhone to stream video while I work out. The YMCA tests confirm that I usually have a good enough signal for reliable video streaming.
The app lets you share what you find via Twitter and email. It’s ad-based, and while there’s a reference to a CarrierCompare Pro that lets you pay to remove the ads, I couldn’t find that version in the iTunes App Store.
When the newest iPhone comes out, I’ve been considering switching from AT&T to Sprint or Verizon – largely because I’m unhappy with the way the company uses throttling to punish its unlimited users manage its network. I haven’t yet used this app to see what the service is like at work, but I recently moved to a different corner of the Mighty Houston Chronicle building and the AT&T signal is terrible there. I have to move to a different area just to make and receive calls at times.
I’ll run some tests there later today and update this post with the results. Meanwhile, if you’re an iPhone owner, download this free app and let us know the results in the comments.
Oh, and you might also want to try a similar app, RootMetrics’ Coverage Map, which uses aggregated reports from its users to map service quality.