The problem isn’t always the mobile carrier, although often it is a carrier issue.

Regardless of where the problem lies, bad wireless coverage can silently cost businesses big—especially those with large field service operations.

Businesses invest in tablets and smartphones, applications and other mobility solutions, but often they are at the mercy of their public cellular carrier and have little insight into how their carrier of choice is performing. Is the connection for their workers actually 4G, or really is it 3G? Is the coverage good? Are there spots where there are consistent wireless issues?

These are meaningful metrics, but usually there is no hard data for a business to act on. At best, management has anecdotal evidence in most cases.

That’s where Locality comes in, a new solution by enterprise software developer NetMotion Wireless (News - Alert). Locality puts a small agent on the mobile device as a server that then collects that performance information.

“Now the organization has visibility into how things are really working for them,” Andy Willett recently told TMCnet, SVP of business development and marketing for NetMotion. “It tells them signal quality, it tells them where they are having dropped connections, it tells them how their adapters are performing. So now they have real data as opposed to anecdotal data about how things are working.”

Willett said that the data sometimes leads to conversations with carriers about improving coverage in certain spots, or even the need to change carriers. Often improving adapters and antenna design is needed to deliver the wireless quality that the business needs.

“Sometimes it is supplementing coverage with signal boosters or repeaters,” he said. “There are a lot of different factors that go into making that a solid connection, and this provides them data so they can take the appropriate action.”

The improved wireless visibility sounds like a boon for enterprises but a thorn for the wireless carriers. That actually is not the case, however, since carriers are always the first to be blamed when there’s a problem.

“The carriers also really like the tool,” noted Willett. “The first person they point at is the carrier. Yet, there is a lot of other factors in play like antenna design, is the firmware up to date, what kind of application traffic are you pulling? There are lots of other variables to this, so the fact that now they can have real data is very helpful.”

Casting the light of day on a shady area can shake things up, but it almost always makes sense in the long run. Visibility is a good thing, and NetMotion brings that to wireless performance with is Locality solution.