Monday, 18-Dec-2017 — Data Quality

Industry spectrum data, supplied by Rogers, Telus, Bell, etc attempt to describe the locations and capacities of Canada's cellular networks. How does this data compare with our spectrum data used by Canada Cellular Service?

Both images below depict one multi-tenant site at 950 Fenell Ave E in Hamilton, Ontario. The left image is our spectrum data; the right image is industry spectrum data.

Loxcel Spectrum Data (Correct)

Industry Spectrum Data (Incorrect)

Our spectrum data, viewed through Canada Cellular Services, places this site squarely atop an apartment building. In contrast, industry spectrum data, viewed through an in-house tool, reports Rogers @ red block 2, Bell @ 5, and Freedom @ 1, 3, 4, 6.

Six locations for one cellular site? Industry spectrum data suffer from many other quality issues, including

• location fragmentation: identify two or more site locations, where only one really exists.
• duplicate records: report network capacity that exceeds what really exist.
• lost records: suggest a licensee lacks coverage where, in fact, it really has coverage.
• incorrect units: report channel capacity of only 20 KHz instead of 20 MHz.
• incorrect civic street address
• skewed locations: misplace site 100m or more from its real location.

The images above illustrate just one of thousands of issues addressed by our data quality team. We use powerful in-house tools to monitor (from many angles) and correct industry spectrum data, to address all issues listed above. Many sites are repositioned to within 5m of its actual location, and supplemented with a civic street address and site type (eg. Monopole, Lattice, Rooftop). Finally, our subscribers from coast-to-coast report other data issues they observe in the field, helping us prioritize which of the 1.5 million industry spectrum data records are reviewed and corrected.

In short, our subscribers access the most accurate information about the locations and capacities of Canada's wireless networks.

Thursday, 7-Dec-2017 — Overshot Detection

Wireless installers value the power & simplicity of Closest Sites, a feature common to Canada, Australia and New Zealand Cellular Services. The example below illustrates a new feature — Overshot Detection — and shows a wireless link overshooting seven other sites.

An overshot is simply a macro site that lies between your site @ left and the donor site @ right. These overshots, especially #6 and #7, can be problematic for a directional antenna deployment.

The big arrow above the blue Fresnel zone points to an Overshot drop-down, from which you select the appropriate horizontal beam width, based on the gain of the directional antenna at your site:

Wednesday, 22-Nov-2017 — New Wireless Broadband Providers

We are bringing over 70 wireless broadband providers to our many online services.

Canada adds

Xplore, Digicom, Inukshuk, MCSNet, ABC Communications, Maskatel, CCI Wireless, Seaside, WireIE, Nexicom, SSI Micro, Groupe Acces, BSurfer, Point To Point, CanWAN, NETAGO, CCL, Execulink, Broadband Communications North, Peace Region Internet Society, EION, AireNet, Internexe ... and 65 more!

And, New Zealand now includes all wireless broadband providers: RCG, Lightwire, Compass, GisborneNet, Chorus, WIZwireless, Kordia, TeamTalk, AoNet, AmuriNet, Uber, Primo, VelocityNet, Wasp.

Monday, 26-Jun-2017 — Get The Map Right!

Business and government use Canada, Australia and New Zealand Cellular Services for site acquisition, leasing, planning, network forecasting and RF configuration & optimization. As US Government Chair Walden recently said:

... they intend to learn from past mistakes and get the map right first before distributing any federal funds. Walden in particular cited the Rural Utilities Service and 2009 Recovery Act, saying a Government Accountability Office investigator testified $3 billion was spent and "we don't know what became of it." Walden said: "That's because the money went out before the maps were drawn."

Our maps display information obtained from our own surveys and from wireless providers. The information from these providers sometimes contain significant errors, which we detect and isolate — ensuring that we get the map right!

A few weeks ago, a wireless provider supplied incorrect information that impacted thousands of sites nation-wide. The map to the left shows what our customers would have seen if this incorrect information appeared on our maps. Fortunately, we caught this error and held off updating the map until the issue was corrected (as shown on the map to its right).

As Reported By Wireless Operator

How It Should Have Looked

As the example above shows, we work very hard to get the map right, and add additional value by delivering other important services that help our customers every day.

Wednesday, 3-May-2017 — AM/FM/TV Station Finder

Friday, 3-Mar-2017 — Sydney's Royal Botanic "Smart Poles"

Monday, 6-Feb-2017 — Australia Northern Coverage

February's update to Australia Cellular Services includes the following site counts:

February's update also saw a 70% expansion in coverage (from 10 to 17) along the northern tip of Australia, just a few kilometers south of Papua New Guinea (new sites are circled):

Before: 10 Telstra Sites

Now: 17 Telstra Sites

Wednesday, 11-Jan-2017 — Network Updates

Happy New Year.

Canada's carriers continue their upwards climb in both site and channel counts. Over the last month, Bell added 134 new sites and 1559 new channels; for Rogers the numbers are 23 and 646, respectively. Most of these new channels were added to existing sites, showing the need to thicken the capacity of existing sites and not just build out new sites.

If we take a longer look over the past 18 months, we see the following notable changes:

• Rogers M2M service removed 7,831 2G channels, primarily in the 850MHz band,
• Rogers increased 700MHz service by 20,570 5MHz channels,
• Rogers reconfigured 2100MHz service by combining 10Mhz channels into fewer but more capacious 15MHz and 20MHz channels,
• Telus reconfigured 2100Mhz service by dividing (vs Rogers which combined) 15,153 15MHz channels into approx. 20,000 5MHz and 10MHz channels,
• Bell increased 1900MHz service by adding 26,737 5MHz channels,
• Wind added 152 sites,
• Videotron added only 30 sites but increased 20MHz channel counts by 1,764 in the 2100MHz band, and
• Xplore (broadband) increased site count by 186, deploying 349 10MHz and 644 20MHz channels.