Telecom equipment giant Ericsson will place sensors in the trunks of about 75 taxis in a pilot program to find cell phone dead spots in the city's five boroughs, city and Ericsson officials said.

Taxis, on the road 24 hours a day, seven days a week, are an ideal way to find the city's nooks and crannies, an Ericsson executive told The New York Post.

The data will be uploaded from the taxis' mobile test units every 10 minutes to help cell phone companies reduce the number of dropped calls.

"We've done this in other cities around the country," Ericsson fleet management manager Niklas Kylvag said. "We do it on behalf of wireless providers who want to keep their fingers on the pulse of their networks."

The company will pay an undisclosed fee to a taxi fleet operator in exchange for installing the sensors, Kylvag said.

Without taxis, the cell companies would have to send out workers with portable sensors and collect data from a variety of locations.