Golden Report
After working on this for the last couple of days, I think using the average RSRQ while traveling through the area and averaging these measurements out is one probably the most important test (if not the most important). This is a good indication of the signal strength and usability of the signal and should signify good data speeds (assuming backend Internet connections handle this well). This is the result of me driving around my area for the last week.
Rounding the latitude and longitude to approximately 3 decimal places and only plotting these points makes the map load much better.
Here are some of the new reports. I’ve tried my best to keep the number of plots for each carrier about the same.
I’m working on a legend to show what each of the colors means but here is what I am using for now:
-5-7 (best quality)- Green
-8-11 (good quality) – Yellow
-12-14 (below average) – Orange
-14-19 (worst quality) – Red
http://reporter.drivetester.us/TMobile-RSRQ-average.html
http://reporter.drivetester.us/Verizon-RSRQ-average.html
http://reporter.drivetester.us/ATT-RSRQ-average.html
I would say these results are what I would expect.
I’ll attempt to explain my thinking
Verizon
Green: 7 Plots
Yellow: 304 Plots
Orange: 575 Plots
Red: 281 Plots
Verizon has a lot of orange and red. Their cell-density (numbers of towers/cells) is not as good at the moment.
AT&T
Green: 41 Plots
Yellow: 498 Plots
Orange: 433 Plots
Red: 179 Plots
AT&T is second. They are in the middle for tower/cell density. They also are quite good with carrier aggregation in this area.
T-Mobile
Green: 177 Plots
Yellow: 629 Plots
Orange: 286 Plots
Red: 81 Plots
T-Mobile is the leader based on these tests. They have mostly green/yellow icons. I have a feeling this is due to to a lot of cell density and bandwidth (especially with the acquisition of Sprint’s midband spectrum) and 5G coming online. This is the benefit of the three-layer-cake.
I may soon work on similar reports on signal strength and average number of usable neighbors.