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GWS tests NYC subway station coverage

As Transit Wireless continues its massive project to cover nearly 280 underground subway stations in New York City, testing company Global Wireless Solutions decided to take a look at the quality of the coverage that has been extended thus far.

CEO Paul Carter spoke with RCR Wireless News about the testing, which was conducted in June and July in around 60 stations where either distributed antenna systems or Wi-Fi coverage has already been rolled out. The company found that the Q Line had the best overall speeds, both for mobile-only and when Wi-Fi was taken into account. Watch the interview below:

[embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S2tIiTYmIU[/embedyt]

GWS used Rhode & Schwarz’s SwissQual QualiPoc Freerider portable testing system with Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphones for the benchmarking. A GWS engineer visited the stations and/or platforms Transit Wireless had listed as having had enhanced service deployed, although GWS found that six stations on the “deployed” list actually had no detected signal, Carter said.

The packet data networks of AT&T Mobility, Sprint, T-Mobile US and Verizon Wireless all were tested for upload and download speeds. Results on mobile data performance and Wi-Fi performance included:

MOBILE DATA PERFORMANCE

BEST LINES

WORST LINES

1) Q LINE 21) Z LINE
2) 6 LINE 20) J LINE
3) R LINE 19) 5 LINE
4) N LINE 18) 3 LINE
5) D LINE 17) C LINE
*Taking only mobile performance into consideration

 

OVERALL TRANSIT WIRELESS WIFI PERFORMANCE

BEST LINES

WORST LINES

1) B LINE 21) 4 LINE
2) A LINE 20) 5 LINE
3) C LINE 19) 6 LINE
4) Q LINE 18) E LINE
5) F LINE 17) 1 LINE
*Taking only Transit Wireless WiFI performance into consideration

The NYC subway system handles more than 1.7 billion riders per year.

Image: 123RF

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ABOUT AUTHOR

Kelly Hill
Kelly Hill
Kelly reports on network test and measurement, as well as the use of big data and analytics. She first covered the wireless industry for RCR Wireless News in 2005, focusing on carriers and mobile virtual network operators, then took a few years’ hiatus and returned to RCR Wireless News to write about heterogeneous networks and network infrastructure. Kelly is an Ohio native with a masters degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where she focused on science writing and multimedia. She has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, The Oregonian and The Canton Repository. Follow her on Twitter: @khillrcr