Mobile Providers’ Coverage Maps Investigation [pdf]

Now if they could only come to the conclusion that most physical ISPs are also lying and or misleading consumers about broadband speed. I don't think that will happen under Ajit Pai though...

The four recommendations contained within the report are a great starting point but it can be expected that lobbying from various industry players will result in only cosmetic change. Practically, the only solution is a cause of action (beyond false advertising) relating to claimed coverage that cannot be disclaimed and can be litigated by private citizens individually and collectively. Once the lawsuits start piling up, honesty in coverage reporting will start to prevail.

And it only took 15 years of Verizon lying about coverage in Vermont for anyone to start to care.

Verizon is (or at least was) the best option there, but like any big company operating in Vermont they forget anything outside Chittenden county exists.

One thing that might solve this is to require that providers provide the service they say they can to the customers location for their standard charged install cost.

If they have to actually provide service to these locations I bet their coverage maps will better reflect reality. In the case of penetration into homes one can make allowances for that.

Its outright fraud, as if you’re a big enough customer, carriers will show you under NDA their real coverage estimates over a broad geography, give you quality projections at any geographic point, or even do a drive and get real time metrics in specific conditions.

So they know what’s real.

So, a carrier lies to a consumer about network coverage to lock them into a contract, with no way out? Sounds like everyday, corporate America.

Recently I was doing some research on the 5G roll-out. I found an interesting stat regarding LTE in the US: LTE performance in the US is lower than most places, but LTE coverage (supposedly) is generally good. I wonder if fudging the coverage numbers accounts for this oddity.

This could have an influence on 5G roll-out since US carriers are heavily indebted. If that's inhibiting capex and if the US network is already behind other nations' carriers' LTE networks because it was starved of capex, US carriers might be extra cautious about spending on 5G, which is supposed to raise opex, too.