Spencer Chen

I live in the Lower Haight neighborhood of SF and for as long as I have lived here, I’ve had to put with spotty 4G coverage. There are times when I avoid walking to my favorite pizza joint because I would literally enter the ‘dead zone’ of cell coverage. I mean, if I can’t tweet while enjoying my slice then what’s the point really?

But I just heard about this iOS app called OpenSignal that will aggregate all the community data concerning the coverage of the 4G networks in your local area.

While its data is completely crowd-sourced, it is from real subscribers using them in real-world scenarios. I think it’s a more accurate snapshot and indicator of the coverage from your carrier than their theoretical maps of where they’re promising coverage.

When I fired up the app and tested my 4G network on Verizon (my carrier), I was astonished on how little 4G coverage I actually had in SF. I realize the data may be incomplete due to the it being crowd-sourced but it does coincide with my own experience with which parts in SF I can reliably get a 4G signal. Not surprisingly, the best concentration of 4G is in FiDi and SOMA where there’s a big density of business offices.

I’m just glad I’m not on AT&T. Sheesh.