Gadgetory

hey guys it's Brandon minimun from pocketnow.com we are doing a Verizon network drive test here we've got the drive test manager Randy here this is the car that goes around and checks Verizon's network to see how it how the signal strength is and all those sorts of things and we're going to learn a little bit about how this all works Randy are you how are you if you want to tell us a little bit about what we've got back here in your trunk well first off is that you fasten a Tahoe so most of the drivers have an Tahoe great things that we need for the run to test is when your air conditioning in the back gets real hot back here ok big enough proof it has all the antennas make sure it was not separation between the antenna so there's no interference right and we need a lot of for me full realtruck get in the wintertime till we get out of the snow we have two units back here to step four is to have separated between voice and data now we can apply them into one so one of these modules works for voice and one for data well they do both okay right now we have data cards sitting on the bottom here and we have the voice bones on top so there's literally phones up here and then there is a some sort of data modem on the bottom correct yeah this is called a single board computer what they call center SBC wise to see okay that controls both got it now this is a little controlled by a laptop up front which tells us what to do when to call routed whole hypothesis so this is beaming to the computer sort of signal strength quality of connections right right and and so why are there four cell phones connected and four data modules do all the cards oh so you have a phone from every different carrier with a to Verizon thirds warfarin tell me more about going okay brand t-mobile real to do MetroPCS MetroPCS Abul interesting and so we've got some cooling equipment here is that what that is great light yeah it's got the other high built-in fans I try to regulate the come true so uh-huh but sometimes it gets hot so we need to vent the front the gold of Pollard and its charitable standard vents and what are these on the windows these are intense for the data I say so kind of get a connection there yeah we have cards that are up two antennas make sure the antennas get away from the equipment okay not get interference staying with a roof through voices Bennett on the roof police antennas are on the roof wait see that can't see them yeah cutting they look like little sort of little round yes all right okay let's and we have the GPS antenna in the middle but we need to report where we have sure sure and you want to walk around to the to the cabin here and tell me what happens up here well basically this is tarnished equipment on it okay you've got some switches there yeah the cars a laptop controls everything that happens in controls through the voice bones ball okay controls what the data model eggs would do so when you're driving around is the system constantly making calls constantly connecting to the data networks the voice calls will average about a minute and a half that's with the figure that was the average voice ball they just play some sound over the line it's actually hard word sentences okay and Harvard sentences or sentences that include all the sounds of the angle fine so you're testing for audio quality too what it does is it'll fall out call hook back hook for crack just continue for a minute and we'll set it down for you okay gain is it's pretty much the same way you'll do upload download test check the whole sequence stop start over upload download test stop story okay and so what's that what's the purpose of this let's say you find that there's an area on the map where the data speed isn't satisfactory so you mark it on a map or something and then what happens after that it's all reported on map any kind of if there's a failure and kind of failure any kind of little mall scores any kind of load data data throughput right drop connections that type of thing don't get mad what we do is give that information at the engineer's okay don't take it back only to actually what with those Pig back to the office gather that information give it the engine the actually will process it first given things near show them where processes where we need to have better coverage coverage throughput might be low like a drop tanks or whatever they'll figure out what happened right they'll figure out whether we need a new cell tower whether we need a better capacity in itself power or if it was just a one day thing worth of despair for what well if you were to need more capacity on cell phone tower what determines its capacity is that it's connection speed or number of number of member of a number of people all right but if I wanted to increase the capacity of a cell phone tower what what would you have to do well that's kind of not something I did I get Bob with but Sharon Lee they can install more cards or more equipment in IC more equipment yeah very good okay so when you're actually driving you're looking at a map yeah okay and and if something happens inaudible alarm will come on and say you know signal dropped your site thing call dropped now if the call dropped you know keep private now what happens sometimes is the equipment doesn't work right okay yeah computers fail if that happens and it doesn't correct itself we have to stop find out if it will correct yourself or doesn't stop shutting down go back to where we started something happened we don't want to make sure have that influence the results of it all okay so do you do you literally drive up and down every street of a given neighborhood or do you have a rehab I Drive about 2,500 miles a quarter which is kind of an average for the drivers revival we drive all the main highways main routes and we try to cover most of the populated areas now new census comes out when the new one comes out that's us okay yeah the census last year I'm sure we'll have to add some route to change major major roots in the major population sure now let's say you cover a certain town you've driven through it you've determined that the signal is good and everything does that mean it's crossed off the map you never go back there or will you go back there a year later or something like that no basically what we do is is benchmarking which means we have to every quarter we try the same thing Oh every quarter you get the same thing shift results decline results decline we know that you know because it's the same way and the same route something else going off what would cause the results of decline well capacitive oh capacity anyways you've grown we're building new buildings right I see very interesting very good so are we gonna drive yeah we go for test drive great so we're back from the drive it was very interesting what happens is the the laptop will give off a audio alarm when something happens and there was one alarm in particular and I looked down at my t-mobile phone and my t-mobile phone at boss service so obviously that implied the laptop was implying that it's t-mobile phone and loss service so we're back here and we're parked and tell us Randy a little bit about why you like driving around because it seems kind of interesting that you know you drive around you look for dead spots what do you like about about what you do well one thing I'm not much of a talker okay so when you do this job you kind of buy yourself a lot you don't need to do a whole lot of car Hey and I've always wanted to be I've worked for the public a lot I just decided no I'd rather be some kind of a tester working at background do my thing and let somebody else actually worry about working with the public so it's kind of a background thing that I liked it I'm testing the network I'm in my vehicle sometimes eight nine ten hours a day completely drive several hundred miles I'll Drive I Drive about 30,000 miles a year 30,000 you're not all testing but you know get into the test coming back from the test so a lot drives you must be a very skilled driver careful driver careful careful and that's one thing about the testing process we're not allowed to have the equipment showing anything on the laptop while we're driving chair focus on the road focused on somebody in front of me and because we drive the same route all the time I have to make sure that I make the right turns I just can't drive anywhere will do so but to me you know testing is fit for fun I mean that's kind of what you do for a living yeah you testing it's fun to test on yeah I test Network I don't testify site testing Network been doing it for about five years used to work in sales for wireless before this and give me an idea of sort of the the radius that you will cover in in the course of a of a drive I mean we go from Philadelphia to New Jersey or you go up to New York sometimes or is that not year my my specific area involves Philadelphia County all the surrounding counties Mercer County which is Trenton New Jersey Wilmington Delaware Cecil County Maryland and and well western counties in southern New Jersey is there any overlap between drivers yep no we basically do by county so we meet at cams and the other regions meet at where we stop so we all have over we don't necessarily but we overlap a little bit just to make sure we have we handoff in to the different regions but we make sure that all the roads are driven end-to-end across the country to make sure all the roads were covered sure so if somebody works is kind of a little different up if somebody works in a skyscraper and no one in the in the building gets Verizon service and they call Verizon do they send you out in your car or do they send someone out an engineer on the ground of the laptop to test the conditions okay well there's in building engineers that will handle that okay don't come out with their equipment figure out what needs to be done to get that office building covered with rider on sir that's not something I can do now we will have portable devices again what I do is basically all carriers we all we did there is a portable place that covers all the carriers that we're thinking about getting into that can be in building but right now that's not part of what I do okay as something you mentioned on the drive that we didn't cover previously is that you're also testing the LTE data on Verizon yeah does that mean you're also testing the WiMAX on Sprint yeah I see so you've got pretty much everything covered we try to cover everything question yeah there's a lot of antennas connected to this vehicle so sure it stands out a little bit yeah primary thing about all the drivers and about this whole program is safety they want us to drive safe no matter what Sheriff that makes sense right very good well thank you very much Randy okay appreciate it yeah