Trucks identify rubbish cell signals
Wusterhausen – On a street in Wusterhausen, around an hour’s drive north of Berlin, a man paces intently, holding his cellphone in front of him.
“I’m looking for network, because here this area is not good,” says Arek Karasinski, in town on a business trip from Poland.
Issues with phone signal are a source of constant frustration for the residents of Wusterhausen, which sits in one of Germany’s many blackspots, out of reach of any mobile network.
“We’re here in Germany, an industrial nation, and we have all of these dead zones,” says Matthias Noa, head of waste management firm AWU.
Noa was so exasperated that when the local government asked if they could use his garbage trucks to do something about it, he quickly agreed.
For months now, the trucks have been fitted with a device that measures the signal quality on their routes across the district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin.
Because their work takes them everywhere across the area, they are the perfect vehicles for the job. “We go out on the ground, into every nook,” says Werner Nuese, the vice-president of the local council, who was not satisfied with the efforts made by public bodies or private groups to plot the signal problems.
Jonny Basner, a driver participating in the programme, knows the trouble well. “It would be great if I had enough signal to reach the depot from the villages (on the route),” he says.
Trackers have been handed out to hikers and cyclists to fill in the gaps left by the rubbish collectors.
On a map, Nuese points out the spots marked in red where the signal is at its worst. “Even if this is a rural area in the northeast of Germany, we shouldn’t be forgotten. That’s our demand,” he says.
A short walk shows the issues people are facing. “Outside on the terrace I can get signal, but in the house there is nothing, no one can reach me on the phone,” says Dieter Mueller in Bantikow village.
About 10km away in Wusterhausen itself, Marko Neuendorf says he has cancelled his phone contract “because there simply is no signal here”.
The region would become more attractive to investors and tourists if the mobile network were better, local officials believe.
“Every cottage industry has gone digital; every single electrician uses a tablet to order spare parts. It’s not just big companies that are more digital,” says Noa.
Nuese says medical spas in the area have been getting poor reviews “because the signal is very bad”.
“It’s a measurable economic disadvantage,” he says.
The obsolescence of a lot of Germany’s infrastructure and administration shot to the top of the political agenda with the exit of Chancellor Angela Merkel from office a year ago.