First post here, so apologies if this is the wrong place for this topic. Wasn't sure where else to put a feature request. Hopefully this forum is monitored by company employees. I would really like the ability to search for campgrounds that have high bandwidth cellular data availability from a specified provider. Given the recent change to indicate high, medium, or low bandwidth availability by cellular provider on each campground's page, this seems like a logical new search parameter. I'm sure I'm not the only camper who would appreciate the ability to quickly find prospective campgrounds to work from.
Cellular coverage changes rapidly. 5G is being rolled out across the country and areas with no service today may have great service tomorrow. Also, who would make the determinations as to the quality of coverage, taking into account that like wifi it is dependent on how much traffic is running across a given access point. From a practical standpoint, with multiple Cellular providers to account for, it would literally take years for any such data base to be populated. A very small percentage of guests actually post reviews and it is safe to assume that only a fraction of those would provide detailed information on their particular cellular carrier's services. By the time any data base got significantly large enough to be of any use, the information would be woefully out of date.
Interesting. Didn't expect such strong resistance from such a simple feature request. Nevertheless... > areas with no service today may have great service tomorrow. True, however if I look at a campground review from yesterday and someone indicated they got 20mbps from Verizon while they were there, I would take that as reasonable evidence that I am likely to have the same or similar experience if I went in the coming days, weeks, or months. > who would make the determinations as to the quality of coverage The same users we rely on for reviews of all other aspects of campgrounds. And since this site makes it so easy to provide cell provider speed data, it makes sense to me that we be able to use that data as search criteria. Here's an example of that information, in case you haven't seen it yet. Notice the "Take a Speed Test" button. > it would literally take years for any such data base to be populated Let's not let "perfect" be the enemy of "good" here. There are clearly some campgrounds that have speed data available. That's better than nothing, right? If I could set my search criteria to all campgrounds where Verizon data is available at medium or higher speeds, clearly I'd get at least some results that are promising for my needs. > By the time any data base got significantly large enough to be of any use, the information would be woefully out of date. You could make the same argument against having "wifi" as a search parameter - which already exists. Is it not useful to narrow down the camps that offer wifi? For all you know, a given camp could eliminate that option tomorrow! Again, some data is better than no data. Just as we have to take older reviews with a grain of salt, so would anyone looking at older cell data speed reports.
Nick, Thanks for your comments. We value what our members have to say, and when they make a suggestion we run it by our web developers and programmers who ultimately decide if the suggestion has merit and can be implemented based on many factors. We want to meet our members' needs, and the only way we can continue to do that is to hear from them and take their ideas into account. Thanks for becoming a member at Campground Reviews, and we will look forward to hearing more from you.
