Over 3M connectivity data points gathered per month during the first 12 months of Cambridge Ahead’s crowdsourcing initiative #CambsNotspotter.
In March 2016, Cambridge Ahead, the business and academic member group dedicated to the sustainable growth of Cambridge and its region, launched #CambsNotspotter – a crowdsourcing initiative aimed at identifying gaps in mobile and broadband connectivity across the region. The initiative encouraged Cambridge employees and residents to participate by providing usage data from their home, office and mobile connections to understand current connectivity provision and determine development requirements. The data gathered enabled Cambridge Ahead to evidence how actual connectivity compared to that provided by the operators to Ofcom, as well as identify any specific local challenges.
12 months on, the data shows a significant move towards 4G, which provides very fast internet access. An improvement in 4G coverage is shown, as operators continue to increase deployment and the number of people using 4G mobiles (and therefore measuring 4G connectivity) increases. Between January and March this year 9.56M data samples were collected, which when compared to the initial data pull of 8.77M samples collected in the first three months of the #CambsNotspotter initiative between May and July 2016, shows 4G availability (from any operator) increasing from 52% of locations measured to 74%.
