Clearwire Adds "Honest" Coverage Maps

Kudos to Clearwire who has taken the “coverages map battle" to a whole new level, in a way that potential wireless users might find more useful than anything offered by Verizon or AT&T.   Their coverage maps use anecdotal network data signals from testing to show actual expected performance on a block-by-block level.  View the new maps at Clear.com/imap, which combine RF engineering network-performance graphs on top of a Google Map, allowing you to see a more detailed map of WiMAX deployments in each of its live markets.

It will be interesting to see how Clearwire customers users begin to add locations to our map of 4gdeadzones.com. Not all dead zones are treated equally and eventually 4G and LTE coverage maps will have to be audited for their claims as well. Maybe Clearwire would be open to being the first company to view user-generated maps as a customer-friendly service similar to financial auditing services Deloitte or PricewaterhouseCoopers.  It won't be long before major retailers Amazon, Best Buy Mobile and Radio Shack get into the coverage map business and will force carriers to be more transparent about their coverage.  Auditing is one of the best ways to accomplish this.