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A wireless service map created by the Vermont Department of Public Service shows that despite wireless providers’ claims of coverage, there are areas along the state’s major roads where a wireless phone user can’t pick up a signal.

“Anyone who drives Vermont’s roads experiences that the industry’s coverage data is not accurate,” said Clay Purvis, director for telecommunications at the DPS. The department tested the areas that wireless providers had claimed were served at 5 megabits per second, or Mbps. The DPS test showed that many of those areas “actually lack sufficient coverage to even make a call,” he said.

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The problem of incomplete mobile phone service in Vermont is exacerbated by the fact that land lines frequently fail, particularly in winter, said state Rep. Laura Sibilia, I-Dover. Sibilia said that without mobile coverage, her constituents often end up lacking any means of communication while waiting for their land lines to be repaired.

“It is no longer about, ‘Can I make a cell phone call, can I use my iPad, can I work from home now,’” said Sibilia. “Now it is really for me about, ‘Can I call for help? Can I call the police, can I call an ambulance, can I call my doctor?’ This wireless matters. It’s a piece of solving the vulnerability that is opening up in rural Vermont. The telephone companies are developing a fairly cavalier attitude about fixing those old systems.”

The DPS launched its mapping effort after six mobile phone companies that serve Vermont gave the Federal Communications Commission information showing that most of the state is covered by one of the companies. The interactive map showing each phone company’s coverage, a key, and a tutorial on using the map are all available on the department’s website.

The FCC used the information from the six — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Sprint and VTel — to create a coverage map that it will use as it prepares to pay out $4.53 billion under a program known as Mobility Fund Phase II to expand mobile broadband service in rural areas. Under the FCC rules for the program, areas without access to wireless service providing at least 5 Mbps will be eligible for grants to expand infrastructure.

Based on information from the mobile phone companies, only 1,310 square kilometers out of 25,000 square kilometers of Vermont lacked adequate service, according to the DPS.

“I don’t think they have set out to be intentionally deceptive,” Sibilia said of the phone companies. “I don’t know if they take topography into it.”

The FCC gave states the opportunity to create their own maps of coverage. Last fall, a DPS employee drove more than 7,000 miles on Vermont highways and state roads to gather the information for the DPS cell phone coverage map.

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The FCC and the DPS divided the state into blocks. The FCC defines adequate service as at least 75 percent of each block in the grid receiving a minimum of 5 Mbps of download speed. The DPS survey covered about 20 percent of Vermont’s 25,000 blocks, but those were the areas with most of Vermont’s structures and roads.

“The good news is that our tests newly identified 1,607 square kilometer blocks where service at 5 Mbps is available from at least one provider,” Purvis said on the department’s website. “Even better, the 4,186 one-kilometer square blocks where we were able to mount a challenge to the asserted coverage should now be eligible for the Mobility Phase II program,” he said.

“I really applaud the Department of Public Service for going out and doing this,” Sibilia said. “They have limited resources and this is an incredible use of those resources. We have a much better idea of at least wireless capabilities.”

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