Brandenburg: Garbage trucks are looking for dead spots

Garbage trucks are supposed to help on their daily trips to detect dead zones in Brandenburg.

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The Waste Management Union (AWU) helps to detect dead spots.
© awu-oberhavel.de
In the Brandenburg district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin, a new project was launched this week to detect dead spots in sparsely populated areas.
“Especially in the regions away from the cities and main traffic routes, but also in forest areas, there is often little or no network,”
explains District Administrator Ralf Reinhardt (SPD) to the dpa news agency, as reported by the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
“Real network boxes” in garbage trucks
In order to get mobile network operators to expand the infrastructure, the district now wants to collect the relevant data via so-called “real network boxes”. The devices from the engineering company STF Group are to be installed in waste management vehicles and collect data on the radio coverage on their daily trips when collecting bulky waste. A corresponding project already existed in Neuruppin and in the East Frisian district of Aurich.
Project runs for twelve months
In Ostprignitz-Ruppin, the vehicles of the Waste Management Union (AWU) are equipped with two of the “real network boxes”. In order to achieve even greater coverage when collecting data, employees of the district administration should cycle along additional field and forest paths with the boxes. As part of data collection, the quality of telephone calls should also be checked in addition to data transmission. The project is initially designed for twelve months. The data obtained should then be included in the negotiations on the construction of radio masts in the region. The federal mobile infrastructure company (MIG) could give the network operators additional incentives as part of a subsidy.