| Review of the Loxcel Web Page |
I normally don’t
review web pages, but this one is just so closely related to what I do on this
web page that it seemed impossible to ignore. Unlike my site however,
Loxcel is not a hobby page, it’s actually a serious venture. As such it
comes in two different flavors: free (for casual users); and a subscription
offerings that provides some rather useful features.
What Loxcel is can best be described as a Canada-wide source of site location
maps that are kept up-to-date more aggressively than anything I can do for
Southern Ontario alone. They have a “channel” to Industry Canada that nets them
timelier site updates than what I can get from the publicly-available database
on the Industry Canada web page. In addition to the more up-to-date site
locations, the page also provides a wealth of information on each site.
Depending upon your subscription level, they offer a variety of “filters” for
choosing which sites are displayed on the map at any given time. For free users,
these filters are restricted to just the various providers, but for those with a
paid subscription you can choose from a wider range of filters, such as those
that display only LTE sites, those with co-locations, or new sites added since
the last update.
Clicking on an individual site pulls up a list of all the providers and
frequencies operating at that location. You also get other detailed information
including antenna azimuth (which direction they point), height above the ground,
power output, antenna gain, cable loss, radio manufacturer, radio model number,
antenna manufacturer, and antenna model number. Much of this latter information
isn’t of much use to a casual user, but it’s only available with the
subscription service anyway. It’s really meant for industry types who can use
this site to quickly find the sort of information that would only matter to
them.
Besides this list, there are also numerous other tabs containing even more
information. Two of these tabs allow user-submitted information. The first is
called Notes, which allows users to submit text describing something peculiar
about the site. The second is called Photos and it allows users to upload
photographs of the site. Other tabs give the exact address of the site, while
another includes an option to export all of the site information, as well as its
location, to a KML file. This type of file can be loaded into Google Earth.
A wealth of other features allow users to find the nearest site and
which sectors of that site would provide the strongest signal for their chosen
location. However, this feature doesn’t completely abide by the current filter.
It does list only channels from the provider you have chosen in your filter, but
not the air interface technology. Say for instance you picked Rogers LTE. You’d
get a list containing just Rogers, but it would include LTE, HSPA, and GSM
channels.
In a way, they compete with the work I do to provide cell site maps and I have
often thought of giving up on it and referring users to them. Their existence
has admittedly cooled my enthusiasm for maintaining my own maps, because theirs
are so richly detailed and provide more up-to-date information (even for
non-subscribers).
However, I do feel that their method of site presentation lacks the ability to
provide a clear overview of the sites in a given area. I find their iconography
a little less than optimal, and until you zoom in very close you never see all
the sites displayed at once like you do on my maps. Instead, groups of close
sites are combined into a red circle with the number of individual sites in that
general vicinity shown as a number.
This works fine when
there are thousands of sites on the map at once (due to your current zoom
level), but when you are looking at an area that is from 2 km to around 50 km
wide I feel that showing each individual site, even if it looks a little
crowded, gives the viewer a much greater appreciation of the cellular footprint
in that area.
If you’ve never tried this site before, why not give it a try at
www.loxcel.com. Note however that not all of
the features I've mentioned in the above review will be available to you. Some
are for subscription members only, however after you sign in to you free account
you can click "Demo" to upgrade to a full Paid Subscription for approximately 2
days to try it out (but note that you can do this only once per browser).
Loxcel have provided a PDF file that outlines
the subscription services they offer. You can
download it
here.
