Location, location, phone reception?
Can you hear me now? Trying out reception before buying a new home could save you headaches later.
As professional Realtors and the SMARTER. BOLDER. FASTER. agents in real estate, we at CENTURY21 Realty Partners depend on our cell phones. Many of our clients have come to depend on their phones as well, for staying connected with both work and family. When service is spotty, we often feel as if we are lost in the Stone Age or at least the 80’s. Yet despite how critical connectivity is to many of us, it is surprising how often this factor gets overlooked in a property search.
While it is wise to check how many bars your handset has during showings (particularly in studies and offices), a new website and Android app, OpenSignal, offers offers robust tools to identify the quality of reception. Part of what makes OpenSignal particularly innovative is that reception quality is voluntarily reported from each user to make a searchable composite map of phone reception. This is potentially more accurate than carrier maps since it comes from a neutral source, consumers themselves. OpenSignal also reports only what other users have actually experienced, not theoretically should experience. The other innovation is an open interface that allows other software developers to use that map data with their own products. As seen on the official CENTURY21 twitterfeed, some in the industry are wondering when these maps could show up as overlays […]