Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

[Ilan Volow <listboy AT clarux.com>]

On Tuesday, October 28, 2003, at 06:04  PM, Sil Greene wrote:

> .:> Man, would I love to have one of these for this area:
> .:>
> .:> New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has set up a system that 
> allows
> .:> citizens to report dead zones in wireless coverage throughout the
> .:> city. He plans to publish a map of the dead spots on November 24, 
> the
> .:> first day for wireless local number portability.
> .:
> .:How hard could it be? We could set up an SMS or WAP interface so that
> .:people could use their cell phones to... oh, wait... nevermind.
>
> Nononono, that would work.  Umm.  You'd just have to wait until you 
> were
> out of the dead zone before sending.



Probably the easiest solution that non-geeks would actually use 
(because it requires no activity on their part) would be the cell phone 
automatically recording when and where it hit a dead zone, and then at 
some point when it gets in contact with a working cell to automatically 
transmit that data to the cellular provider.

To evade the catch-22 of needing a signal to record the location of a 
signal that doesn't exist, you'd either have to rely on the cell 
phone's GPS (which most phones don't yet have) or have the phone record 
the last location it had a viable signal. With enough people's phones 
automatically sending in data on the last location where their phones 
had a decent signal, the cellular providers can average that data out 
and get a rough idea as to the shape of the dead zone.

--Ilan

--
Ilan Volow
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico