Utilities commission pursues provider-level cellular coverage maps, data access for modeling improvements

The New Canaan Utilities Commission agreed Feb. 27 to move forward on creating provider-level cellular coverage maps and to pursue analytic modeling of coverage improvements using drive-test data from Ookla.

Commission leaders said the commission has acquired raw data files and arranged a consultation with Ookla staff to advise how best to use the data. The immediate objective is to produce a town map that shows coverage by individual providers at the road and residence level; a second phase would model how coverage would change if infrastructure — for example, changes to towers or small-cell deployments — were added.

The work is intended to produce two deliverables the commission said will be useful to residents and town decision-makers: an interactive map residents can consult for provider coverage at their address and a set of modeled “what-if” scenarios showing likely coverage gains from infrastructure changes.

"The first phase is to try and take the data and get it to be a coverage map by provider, by roads and residences," the utilities commission chair said during…