We got the above sneak peek of Root Mobile from CES this year and launch was promised to be soon. Here we are, just a few short weeks later and Root Mobile has now gone live and is certainly ready to track the coverage offered by your carrier.

“No one carrier is best everywhere, but everyone can find the carrier and phone that are best for them,” said Root Wireless CEO Paul Griff.  “It’s encouraging that thousands of smartphone enthusiasts have pre-registered to help map wireless network performance and we expect that, as the effort is more widely understood, the data provided by crowdsourcing consumers’ phones will provoke fundamental changes in the way that people evaluate and purchase their wireless service.”

Intially, Root Mobile was US only but that has since changed. US and Canadian carriers are now both supported. So, if you've ever questioned your carriers' true coverage areas, Root Mobile can help you put your coverage in comparison to others around you. The application can be downloaded, run in the background and then you can view the data as you see fit. All devices with GPS are supported with the exception of Storms running OS 4.7, so give it a shot and help out.

• Download The Mobile Application From The Root Mobile Website>>

Back at CES we told you about Root Wireless and their mission of reporting on carrier network performance using data collected from real users. In case you missed that post, be sure to check out the video here.

An event like the SuperBowl puts a whole lot of cell phone users in place, so the folks at Root Wireless decided this would be a good instance to see just how well each carrier performed. You can find the whole report below, but here are some of the highlights:

• Verizon Wireless was the day's ‘loser,' recording far more connection failures than typical, while providing the slowest service at the game Sunday.
• Of the ‘Big Four' carriers, AT&T provided the fastest service - despite the expected congestion created in part by the iPhone's popularity. But like Verizon, it reported much higher connection failure rates than usual; attempts to connect failed 16% of the time.
• T-Mobile was a winner, far and away recording the fewest connection failures and providing transmission speeds on par with its everyday service. Sprint also performed close to par, relative to its everyday service. (Charts included with report.)

It's pretty interesting that prior to the SuperBowl three of the big four carriers issued press releases saying they would beef up their service for the game (read Verizon | AT&T | Sprint). Despite the high connection failure rate, it appears that AT&T's efforts paid off, given that they maintained speedy download speeds. As for Verizon... well... Root Wireless tells us they have never performed so poorly in one of their tests before. What's up with that?! Full Report below.

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Apologies in advance for the background noise in this video -- it was loud as heck at ShowStoppers at CES 2010 -- but it's worth working through the sound pain so you can hear what Root Wireless is all about. With coverage maps all the rage in carrier commercials these days, Root Wireless is on a mission to make these maps more than lip service, by creating them off from real world user data. How do they do that? By letting users install a small Root Wireless app onto their location-aware device which runs in the background, collecting data on carrier signal strength and network data speed, and reports it back every so often to Root Wireless who compiles the info into useful data for consumers and other stakeholders (I think carriers themselves are pretty interested in what Root Wireless is up to as it can help them identify and fill in network gaps). 

Be sure to watch the video above and check out rootwireless.com for more info. The service is still in beta phase, but you can register up to become a beta tester. They're looking for smartphone enthusiasts to get this app loaded and put it to good use, so let's help them out. The more users running this on their phones, the better the service will be! Cool stuff, huh?