An interesting update from Lil Magenta in how they advertise and detail their network coverage.

We all skeptically check out network coverage maps from cell phone carriers. Asking people about real world usage in major cities, everyone has a story about each carrier where that network conked out on them. Instead of continuing to use predictive estimations of network coverage, from now on T-Mobile will show actual user data.

Crowdsourcing customer experience, combining that with verified third party speed testing, and updating their maps twice a month.

You can check out the new map here, and read T-Mo’s press release below. They also throw out entertaining PR…

(Thanks for the tip A.J.)

Announcing the Next-Gen Network Coverage Map. Only at T-Mobile.

As the Un-carrier™, it’s our nature to expose and eradicate broken wireless industry norms—those painful practices Americans have endured for so long that we’ve lost sight of how nonsensical and needless they truly are. Like being forced to wait all that time to upgrade to a new phone. Or being charged 15x more for your data when you leave the country. Or having unused data you’ve purchased confiscated each month. T-Mobile’s relegated all that to the trash can of history.

And now, you can add the carriers’ old-school coverage maps to that list. Today, I’m proud to introduce T-Mobile’s Next-Gen Network Map− the industry’s first and only crowdsourced, customer-verified network coverage map − right here at t-mobile.com/coverage.

For years, every carrier has produced their network map in the same way, based on ‘predictive coverage estimations.’ The problem is that these maps are exactly that—best estimates. But for some time now, there have been far more advanced methods and technologies available to produce far more accurate coverage maps—based on the actual experience of real customers, like you and your family.

Still, the carriers have stubbornly held on to their old maps based on imperfect methods and dated technologies. But we are changing all that!

T-Mobile’s new Next-Gen Network Map reflects near real-time customer experiences on our network—based on more than 200 million actual customer usage data points every day. On top of that − to validate and augment our own collected data − our new map also incorporates additional customer usage data from trusted third-party sources, including Inrix and others.

Features of our new coverage map include:

• Customer-verified coverage based on actual customer usage, resulting in a vastly more transparent and accurate map, showing, for example, exactly where you can expect 4G LTE, 4G, 3G or other levels of coverage.
• A Verified Coverage icon indicating where the majority of data is provided by T-Mobile customers reporting their actual network experience, providing an added layer of confidence.
• Data that’s updated twice monthly − compared to data presented on the carriers’ maps, which is already dated by the time it’s printed and published and may be months or even years old.
• Speed test data from trusted third party apps showing average download speeds from customer speed tests over the last 90 days.

As we continue to rapidly enhance and expand our 4G LTE coverage to reach 300 million Americans this year, our new Next-Gen coverage map will also continue to evolve—based on billions of data points provided by real customers’ real-life network experiences. Because, at the end of the day, your experience with our network is what it’s all about.

Again, I invite you to take a look at the future of network coverage maps and discover for yourself what our customers are experiencing today on T-Mobile’s Data-Strong network.