A New Approach on Estimating Germany’s Mobile Broadband Coverage based on Crowdsourced Data

Abstract:
After the Funkloch App was published by the German government, the gathered data resulted in one of the biggest crowdsourced datasets on the availability of mobile broadband. Currently, most evaluations of the German broadband coverage situation are based on data provided by the mobile network operators and use a simple categorization method for the network technology. Using the crowdsourced Funkloch App data, this paper presents and tests a new methodology for evaluating mobile broadband coverage in different countries. This approach can provide both a general overview of the covered area and specific test cases, such as the network coverage of educational facilities. These tests demonstrate the impact of the different methodology for the network coverage of residential areas, educational buildings, and public transportation infrastructure.