T-Mobile Debuts New Crowd-Sourced 4G LTE Coverage Map

T-Mobile today unveiled what they call their “Next-Gen Network Coverage Map,” which the carrier says is the industry’s first crowd-sourced coverage map, designed to reflect “near real-time customer experiences.”

Features of the new coverage map include:

• Customer-verified coverage based on actual customer usage, showing where you can expect 4G LTE, 4G, 3G or other levels of coverage.
• A Verified Coverage icon indicating where the majority of data is provided by T-Mobile customers reporting their actual network experience.
• Data that’s updated twice monthly.
• Speed test data from third-party apps showing average download speeds from customer speed tests over the last 90 days.

The carrier says the new data is based on 200 million actual customer usage data points, updated every two weeks. T-Mobile says this compares to data from other carriers that could be months old at the newest.

“For years, every carrier has produced their network map in the same way, based on ‘predictive coverage estimations.’ The problem is that these maps are exactly that—best estimates,” said T-Mobile Chief Technology Officer Neville Ray in his blog post. “But for some time now, there have been far more advanced methods and technologies available to produce far more accurate coverage maps—based on the actual experience of real customers, like you and your family.”

Sections of the map will show hexagon icons with little checkmarks inside, which indicate that the area shown is using the real-time customer verified data. (As seen in the graphic above.)

The new coverage map is available at T-Mobile’s website.