The launch of google’s navigation software for android phones and other mobile services that rely on the cloud got me thinking about our current mobile data choices here in Northern Ireland.
The five major mobile phone companies 3g coverage can be seen below (these taken from their sites – official ofcom report here).
Vodafone
Orange (the darker the better)
O2 (the darker the better)
T mobile (only around Belfast!)
3
Opendatani is the Northern Irish equivalent of data.gov in the US and data.gov.uk in the UK, however it appears to have stalled since it launched in July this year with a grand total of 4 datasets available.
The example below is one of these datasets mapped. A simple illustration, but makes it fairly easy to find your nearest health and social care provider in Northern Ireland rather than navigating through a badly designed website or scrolling down a list. We need more datasets like this!
After reading this and agreeing with Matt’s statement that “…Belfast needs a free-to-access Municipal Wi-Fi network” and noting that the “…response we got back was that the area already had BTOpenZone, which, if you investigate is notable for it’s absence in the area”.
A quick search on BT Openzone’s coverage map of the area shows that even they don’t claim to have great coverage in the area. The red spots are BT’s coverage and the black line is the approximate boundary of the Cathedral Quarter.
A spot of wardriving was required to prove or disprove this. There are a number of hotspots around the area but the survey proves that they don’t provide anywhere near like 100% coverage.
The wifi sniffing software used was Vistumbler and the usb GPS device was a Globalsat BU353.
The map data can be downloaded in kml format here or kmz format here.
Recently finished reading Cryptonomicon.
“For the first couple of weeks he spent in Manila, his work consisted of walking. He walked all over the city carrying a handheld GPS receiver, taking down latitudes and longitudes”. p89
“This time it’s a detailed rendering of the cityscape of Manila…he gathered the data for the damn thing by walking around town with his GPS receiver”. p103
“Depth could be obtained by putting a green light on the head of every person in London and then recording their tracings for a few nights…One day a person would walk out…carrying a highly accurate street map of London, reconstructed from the information”. p117-118
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