Mobile LTE Coverage Map
fcc.gov
fcc.gov
Eh? Why link or even talk about this. Here's 3rd party coverage collected by members over at Cellmapper. It's not perfect or complete but it's real data without 'assumptions' being made: https://www.cellmapper.net
At least there's a site for Canada that has exactly where every single tower is located: https://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/cancellsites.html
http://sms-sgs.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/sms-sgs-prod.nsf/eng/h_0001...
Or did you mean to paste a different site but had the parent URL on your clipboard?
Radio propagation maps are used when siting new cell towers, for example. I'm not a radio wave propagation modeller, but my understanding is that 'assumptions' include things like treating trees as columns with a height equal to tree height and a diameter equal to tree crown diameter, for example. Accuracy depends on the type and resolution of input data (eg photo-derived elevation models vs lidar point clouds).
See [1] for some examples. I have no affiliation with them, it's just a site I have bookmarked.
> For one, their map isn't restricted to areas that have paved roads or are otherwise regularly occupied by people, unlike the cellmapper map.
My folks have a place in on the beach in a (summer) resort community up north. It's sparsely populated and has very spotty mobile phone service.
I've had Verizon and AT&T (post-paid) which worked everywhere, including on the beach (without picking up service across the lake), Google Fi which worked in some places, but not anywhere on the property the home existed, Sprint and T-Mobile which were nowhere within ten miles of the city.
And then there was Visible. This an MVNO owned by Verizon but is not Verizon, however, it's cheap, fast (where it works) and simple/pre-paid. I had assumed, "hey, Verizon worked great, this is cheaper than them, so this will work, too." I'm not normally terribly naive, but more wrong I could not have been and I should have expected there to be no service.
The Verizon map shows a large dead zone north of where the home is, and smaller ones nearby, but it appears I'd have adequate coverage for the location of the lake house with any provider. Verizon post-paid works brilliantly because post-paid service phones end up in the "Extended Network". Visible had absolutely no service, much less than indicated on the (non-extended) Verizon map and the FCC map.
The cellmapper map was the most accurate but suffered from the problems you mentioned -- it strongly indicated that I'd have no service with Verizon (Visible) in those locations.
For these maps to be useful, they have to tell me what quality of service exists for an average phone in a given area. Having poor service (anything on my current phone that's two bars or less[0]) is no service. I'm sure it's a surprise to nobody that the provider maps are overly optimistic, but the fact that a 20-mile by 20-mile area that's bright red on the Verizon map (which indicates non-Extended service) has zero bars -- absolutely no service whatsoever -- and the surrounding ten miles has non-functional service is ridiculous.
Do they have more accurate information about coverage internally? I hope so -- if they're basing network expansion on this marketing map, they'll see the population density and the current performance and figure it's not worth fixing anything. If a business is connecting devices, wirelessly, you'd expect them to have service quality/reliability information that's far more accurate than what they presented to me. Admittedly, it's a "hard problem", but the existing maps are unacceptably bad and seem far worse than they should be. The moral of the story, at least as far as MVNO-Verizon is concerned, if there's a dead zone anywhere near where you need service, expect that lack of coverage to be an order of magnitude larger than indicated.
[0] I'm fairly certain that "2 bars" means "the phone briefly connected to a tower it can't otherwise use" -- it's a tease, but ultimate it's no service.
Not the case in, e.g., Bedford NY or New Canaan CT, just checked.
These are examples of suburban areas within an hour commute of mid-town Manhattan, where cell coverage is spotty (combination of NIMBY and rolling terrain).
Same story for southern coast barrier islands off Long Island.
To your point though, the carrier map claims blanket coverage in North Greenwich (S of Merritt Parkway), while in reality along North Rd there are 7 and 8 figure homes that have no cell service from any of AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon.
Lately I’ve found a quick and dirty viz for coverage is looking at a given carrier’s 5G coverage maps. They need stronger signal for that to work, so it shows the “dark” areas more easily.
On the barrier islands mapping from the carriers, you can even see effects of dunes. That surprised me.
Nor is this a coverage map -- even carriers with physical infrastructure often have roaming agreements that extend their coverage beyond their own networks. It is expected that coverage maps differ from this map. And it is also expected that different network operators have different provisioning of those network services to different customers.
The first sentence,
"This map shows the 4G LTE mobile _coverage_ areas of the nation’s four largest mobile wireless carriers: AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile, UScellular, and Verizon."
The next sentence further defines what coverage means, a cellular signal with a minimum bandwidth requirement.
I'll listen to you though.
What is missing but would be useful is how many users it can support at that minimum bandwidth.
As the page mentions:
> The coverage maps on these service providers’ websites may be based on different parameters and assumptions, such as roaming, and may therefore differ from the information shown here.
It also mentions that the data is generated from Form 477 data. This form only includes data from operators who own their infrastructure. This means it will not include information about services provided through partnerships.
Seriously -- look at the USCellular map layer. This is not a map of the service area that a USCellular customer would expect, because USCellular makes a significant use of roaming under contract with other carriers (labelled 'partner coverage' on their own maps). https://www.uscellular.com/coverage-map/voice-and-data-maps
Also, my reply was in response to a comment about MVNOs, which may or may not provide services equivalent to the carriers they virtualize their network through.
I wonder how accurate they really are.
Repeated visits to the AT&T store to complain were met with them pulling up a google maps like coverage map and saying "Nope see you have fine coverage at your house, go away please."
Basically, it's a probability gradient under certain conditions. You can be the 10%.
The provider I have is data only at $120/mo for up to 1TB of 4G data. I'm not certain, but it seems like they'll move my SIM through different accounts on their backend to ensure that I always have full speed transfer within that limit... as when I'm getting close to a transfer threshold, my speeds will slow down, my modem will reboot at some time during that day, and then afterwards I'm back to full speeds.
So far, never had an issue.
Either way it's $25/mo unlimited everything with the tradeoff being that you can be deprioritized. In the bay area though it works fine and that's a great price for no contract.
As a bonus there are no stores and you sign up via the app, I've been happy with it.
I just don't want to deal with a rep, be forced to go to a store, be forced to sign a contract, have to navigate fifty different dark patterns that obscure the true pricing and try to screw me out of what I want.
If Verizon just charged $50/mo I'd pay it, but their current setup is awful.
Of course, this is just anecdata, and maybe I haven't experienced it because I just don't tend to use a lot of data (< 3 GB/month), and rarely go to areas that will have highly-crowded cell towers.
The other two maps look like BS to me, considering a couple years ago I was carrying two phones from differing carriers and driving around in unpopulated areas in the midwest and there were plenty of holes despite the advertised maps at the time showing perfect coverage in the areas in question.
The surprising thing is that the fcc is buying some of that crap and republishing it rather than asking for raw tower data (location/freq/antenna directions/power/etc) and doing the modeling themselves. Even if the modeling is pretty poor the results are likely better than the best case crap they are getting from att.
Check the corridor from San Antonio to El Paso along I-10. I regularly get zero service along that path for dozens of miles at various points.
And, it's not even the fault of towers--there is some weird "roaming" agreement in that area so Verizon doesn't want to carry the calls but still wants credit for that being "in coverage".
I've been using Google Fi and tried a few others with Visible being the one that I found to be the most difficult to sort out. Visible uses Verizon's network (IIRC, they're owned by Verizon). In the thumb of Michigan, there's a large spot at the tip that Verizon post-paid customers have service (via the Extended Network[0]) but Visible does not. In fact, Lexington and Port Huron, with about a 5 mile buffer, were the only places service functioned similarly to home (albeit LTE rather than 5G) where coverage is solid. And it's not a matter of "there was really poor/slow/spotty service", there was simply nothing from just north of Lexington up M-25 to Port Austin and for much of M-59 from Armada to Port Austin[1].
Over the summer that I had this service, my mental model of the map would have the entire thumb empty with a few bursts of service over a some of the more populated areas, much like T-Mobile indicates. And that's curious -- the T-Mobile map looks a whole lot more like I'd expect for most of the service. Even the post-paid Verizon/AT&T service isn't great in a lot of places -- effectively or actually no service, but according to AT&T and Verizon's maps, I should be working almost everywhere.
[0] Which, if I understand things correctly, is Verizon buying service from someone else.
[1] We hit the dark sky park in Port Austin using Waze which caused me to pay closer attention, one route up, one route back; on M-25, I'd pick up service briefly enough to get a routing update but it sat "looking for service" with the circle/slash (No) symbol matching it. On M-59, it was dead except for Sandusky.
I ask since satellite and even mesh network non-mobile broadband is a super performant and already deployed reality, evidently.
example : https://tech.fb.com/terragraph-alaska/
The AND in "broadband and LTE" part of the title is a huge hint that the and part is _not_ LTE (non-mobile) data.
> The coverage map was created using data submitted voluntarily by the four mobile carriers using certain standardized propagation model assumptions or parameters that were established by the FCC as part of the Broadband Data Collection.
> Please note: The map depicts the coverage a customer can expect to receive when outdoors and stationary. It is not meant to reflect where service is available when a user is indoors or in a moving vehicle.
> Because the coverage map is based on propagation modeling, a user’s actual, on-the-ground experience may vary due to factors such as the end-user device used to connect to the network, cell site capacity, and terrain.
A lot of that info was gathered via on site inspection and spreadsheet filling.
Also most software used to organize access network information sucked hairy balls.
We need data throughput maps, maybe even by time of day.
Having "coverage" doesn't mean you can actually do anything with it.
Boost is an MVNO. Look at the T-Mobile map and you are effectively looking at Boost’s map. It’s the same reason Cricket (AT&T), GoogleFi (T-Mobile/US Cellular), Metro/Mint (T-Mobile), Republic (T-Mobile), Spectrum (Verizon), Visible (Verizon), Xfinity (Verizon), etc aren’t listed.
> Neither is Sprint
Sprint is effectively T-Mobile now. Yes, they haven’t fully merged in all areas, but breaking Sprint only out wouldn’t be very useful for very long.
I am on AT&T and motorcycle quite a bit through the backcountry and use a real GPS navi for that reason. Trusting your phone is useless.
Such a change coming from Europe where I stay connected on any pass through the Alps.
which I can confirm is true!
It also shows blanket coverage at my house by both Verizon and AT&T, which is definitely not true.
It also doesn't address that geographic maps aren't useful for showing deployment of services for people.
To even begin to answer that question, you have to define the problem a little more specifically first:
What does minimum upload/download speed mean? The minimum ever observed? By who? The minimum over a period of time? Through the entire network, or to the tower? Prioritized or deprioritized? Under what testing conditions? Under what usage patterns?
About the closest you're going to get is this: https://webcoveragemap.rootmetrics.com/
Which sucks because I can get a 3G module for my iot projects for 5$ and I think 4G modules start at 50$?
Are we just at the mercy of 4G now for services that need large coverage but low throughput? I know 5G technically has a spec for IOT type stuff but I haven't seen anything about it, and I haven't seen modules for it.
Keep fightin' the good fight, Zach.