Spring Field Testing Week 4

We're entering the last week of field testing with only the northern part of Central Valley and Orange County. Average speeds appear to be very similar to those from last fall.

Compare the above speeds to those from last fall's:

 

The progress map below shows completed locations in red and upcoming in blue.

Spring 2017 Testing - Week 3

Week 3 Status: Red = completed test locations, Blue = soon-to-be-tested

Coming into Week 4 of Spring 2017 mobile field testing, our drivers have compiled a large collection of memorable photos. Follow them on Instagram at: cpuc_broadband_testing

Here is a sample of some of their work.

CalSPEED Testing in France

I traveled to Montpellier France three weeks ago and bought a prepaid SIM from SFR (France's #2 mobile carrier) for my unlocked iPhone. Montpellier is France's fastest growing city and its 8th largest. Here are the speed test results from CalSPEED from a test I ran near the Place de la Comedie, pictured below. 

As we saw with 3G/HSDPA technology in California, ping times were long, between 342 and 347 milliseconds, and hampered real-time streaming capabilities. Granted, my phone was pinging servers on the east and west coasts of the United States, but if I were using LTE instead of 3G, I would expect the ping times to be in the range of 150-200 milliseconds for CalSPEED.

This was my first time using a prepaid SIM from a local carrier, and, not knowing how much data to buy in advance, I bought 20 gigabytes. I thought that would be fine for two and a half weeks of exploring the Languedoc area. To my surprise, by the end of my stay I had only used just over 1 gigabyte, and that was with heavy daily usage. Rather than data, it was battery life that ended up being the limiting factor.

Montpellier has a large student population and there are many new cafes catering to them. Pictured below is a sandwich board written in English, tongue-in-cheek.

The writer Rabelais was an ordained monk and practicing physician, and he taught for a few years at the Montpellier medical college, one of France's oldest.