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Bin lorries and street sweepers in South Yorkshire are being fitted with sensors to map mobile phone signal across the county, part of a year‑long project funded by the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA)
Mobile analytics company Streetwave has been awarded £34,000 for the project and has already begun collecting data in Barnsley, with results for Doncaster, Sheffield and Rotherham due to be published before the end of the year.
The project will produce a free, public online map and postcode checker designed to show which of the UK’s mobile operators — EE (BT), Virgin Media O2, and the newly combined VodafoneThree — provides the best coverage. SYMCA says the information will help residents make an informed choice about which network to buy connectivity from.
Streetwave will use vehicle‑mounted sensors that gathers real‑world measurements of signal strength, download and upload speeds, and reliability as the sanitation vehicles travel across the local area. The company says these measurements are timestamped and independently verifiable, and that the system is intended to provide a practical alternative to operator‑modelled coverage maps by producing continuously refreshed, empirical data.
Streetwave has conducted similar projects in other parts of the UK, including in Norfolk at the end of last year and in Liverpool earlier this year.
The vehicle mapping initiatives sit alongside national tools, such as Ofcom’s own coverage checker, which combines operator‑provided models with regulator testing to display indoor and outdoor coverage. Streetwave say its testing methods are complementary, offering a house‑by‑house, measurement‑based comparison and exportable reports that local authorities, housing providers and planners can embed on public portals.
SYMCA says the data from Streetwave’s testing will become public by the end of the year.
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