Did you forget to send out that email you’ve been putting off for “later today”? Are you already on the subway on your way home? Well no you can find our if there’s a station along your route where you can send out that last email, without taking time out of your commute. The team behind the Subspotting project sets out to capture maps and visualize the available cell phone reception in the entire New York City Subway system.
Since the subway tunnels across New York City aren’t wired for connectivity, cell phone reception outside of stations is partly reliant on stray signals from aboveground. As daily ridership is at about 5.5 million –and its set to increase exponentially over the next few decades –passengers are spending more time on subways and need to figure out how they can stay connected even out of receptions zones.
The project took place over a two week period where the objective was to log the cell phone reception of New York City’s four major phone carriers along the 21 subway lines, 469 stations and 660 miles of track covered by the New York City Transit. The project resulted in a visual portrait of the electromagnetic fields of New York City’s underground –a map that highlights the systems dead spots, stretches of spotty signals and available pockets of connectivity. Check out their video below.
You can check out the work of the Subspotting team, and get a little bit of a history lesson on cell phone reception, from their website by clicking here
Written by: Josue Paul (02/08/2016)