Testing mobile signal strength

Kelly Bodie

I'm wondering if you know of clever ways to test mobile signal quality across providers. Here's the bigger picture: if hundreds of guests are attempting to use their mobile devices to cast silent bids, how do I know it's roughly fair? Ie, that verizon's signal is comparable to sprint's in the venue (even if I don't have a sprint device to test)? The venue says we would be the first group to use mobile devices like this in their center (yippie).

Heather MacKenzie

Ooohhhh, such an interesting question! As a tech nerd, I had to go try to find you the answer to this because I also wanted to know it myself!


I found 2 sites, https://www.gearbest.com/blog/how-to/how-to-check-the-actual-signal-strength-on-your-phone-893 and https://www.weboost.com/blog/how-to-test-signal-strength-on-your-phone which ought to at least be a good start for you.


As I hoped, my phone is very strong!


Best of luck with your event too!

Jeffrey Hand

Unfortunately, there is no way that I know of to make this sort of thing "fair" for all callers. You've got 4G vs. 5G connections, plus, probably the most significant, distance from the cell phone to the nearest tower. Then, if you've got a caller using their phone in their house and connecting to a "network extender" provided by their carrier (because their regular cell signal is too weak at their location), then the phone is connecting to the network extender which is connected to the user's internet instead of a cell tower and that network extender is passing the phone signal through the internet. Now you're dependent on the current speed and stability of the user's internet connection at the time of placing the bid.


Now, all of this to say that the differences in "speed" between all of these scenarios is probably not very significant, but certainly could be enough to impact a first-come, first-served auction bidding process. You're probably more apt to lose out on a bid due to thumb-typing slower than another bidder. ?

Jason Hamman

Is WiFi an option? It would be my first recommendation as a lower latency and likely higher throughput connection.


I see some additional challenges to ensuring fair access for bidders via cellular connection:

1. The more active cell phones you have in an area, the higher the latency and slower the connection is for everyone
2. The building construction itself will likely cause dead/low signal spots
3. Quality of connection depends on what frequencies are used by which carriers AND by which frequencies (bands) your phone supports
   1. For example:
      1. T-Mobile uses LTE bands 2, 4, 5, 12, 66, 71 for service but does not use all bands in all areas.
      2. AT&T uses LTE bands 2, 4, 5, 12, 17, 29, 30, 66 for service but does not use all bands in all areas.
      3. If you buy an unlocked phone from anyone besides your current provider, your phone may work on some of your provider's network but not all.
      4. In this case, if I took an unlocked phone from T-Mobile and used it on AT&T, it would work but I wouldn't be able to access bands 17, 29, or 30. If those are the main bands in your area, you're now in a dead zone because of the version of phone you have, not your carrier.

This is why I recommend a fast WiFi solution instead.