In order to track down gaps in the cell phone network in East Friesland, four garbage trucks will be doing detective work in the district of Leer in the coming months. For a year, the garbage trucks should measure the coverage of the mobile network during paper collection in the entire district and record "white spots", i.e. places with little or no cell phone reception, as the district announced. The district administration then wants to use the data to persuade network operators to further improve the quality of mobile communications. Similar projects already exist in other regions of Germany.

To collect the data, small, octagonal boxes are installed on the dashboards of garbage trucks. They continuously dial into the mobile phone network while the garbage trucks empty the paper bins. According to the STF group from Dülmen, which provides the technology, the garbage trucks are suitable because they drive slowly and get into almost every street. The boxes are to be used every working day for twelve months.

The so-called white spots without sufficient reception annoyed many people, said District Administrator Matthias Groote (SPD) in a statement. Nationwide reception is becoming more and more important, since digitization is also progressing in agriculture and crafts. With the garbage truck data, one wants to demand that the network operators provide rural areas with "decent" mobile communications, said Groote.

There are also maps from the Federal Network Agency that use data from the network providers to show the coverage of mobile networks on the Internet. The aim of the project, however, is to record the network coverage "as it actually is for the citizens," said a district spokesman. That's why the project should run for a year, over different seasons and in all weathers. The district is spending 20,000 euros on the project, which has been running since the beginning of October.

Communication from the district of Leer STF group on mobile phone measurement