>The coverage map was created using data submitted voluntarily by the four mobile carriers using certain standardized propagation model assumptions
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
For one, their map isn't restricted to areas that have paved roads or are otherwise regularly occupied by people, unlike the cellmapper map.
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.
So the question becomes which is more useful for determining whether or not a given phone will work in a given location. My experience is that the cellmapper data was far more reliable.
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.
> So the question becomes which is more useful for determining whether or not a given phone will work in a given location. My experience is that the cellmapper data was far more reliable.
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.
Yes, the OP map shows 100% perfect coverage in my neighborhood for AT&T and that’s definitely wrong. I just moved here and I’m contemplating getting a new carrier because it’s nearly unusable for data.
See my comment history for thoughts on AT&T. Unless you're in one of their strong markets (Georgia?) or using taxpayer subsidized and prioritized service through Firstnet, they are the worst of the major carriers. It's no surprise DISH partnered with them after running spectrum hoarding scam for over a decade.
There's a similar site that shows towers and coverage around the world! And everyone can contribute data too! Sadly you can only contribute on Android but not iOS.
It's based ISED's bimonthly CSV data dump of licensed radio transmitters. Heavy concentration of cellular antennas in some blocks might be because ISED's database lists even nano/picocells.
The map is only a piece of the story too. Depriotitization is a thing you will encounter, mostly on MVNO's. I call it four bars of no data. Just moved from Mint back to AT&T Prepaid because of this situation. Your results will vary wildly regionally, and time of day.
I find the map to be inaccurate for Verizons network where I live. There are places with known dead areas that they say has coverage. I don't mean recent dead zones... I mean they have been around for over a decade.
The description at the top says "Voice: 90% cell edge probability, 50% cell loading factor, maximum resolution of 100 meters. Data: 5/1 Mbps, 90% cell edge probability, 50% cell loading factor, maximum resolution of 100 meters."
Basically, it's a probability gradient under certain conditions. You can be the 10%.
This wouldn't surprise me at all. I ran into the same issue with AT&T during the switch from 3G to 4G. Suddenly, signal at my house went to absolute crap. Couldn't make or get calls. Texts would never send, texts would arrive in a random burst overnight.
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."
Which, I'm reading your comment from a device which is capable of connecting to all four carriers represented, and it's connected to the Internet through wifi and one of those four carriers. Why doesn't this map have any user submitted data, eg from the FCC speed test app. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fcc-speed-test/id794322383
This map doesn't really have anything to do with MVNOs. These maps are just about the deployment of physical infrastructure.
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.
"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.
I'm not saying anything in conflict with the words on this page. This page maps the coverage of services provided by infrastructure that the carriers own. That is not (necessarily) the same as the coverage map of where subscribers can get connectivity.
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.
If you're on a budget MVNO, sure. There are higher quality providers in the space, but you will pay significantly more for them.
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.
I use Visible which is a Verizon subsidiary (MVNO-like, but not an MVNO) - I think they used it to test out stuff or something?
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.
The funny thing to me is if Verizon's plans and website weren't such a disaster I'd be happy to pay more for better service.
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.
I'm on Google Fi and I don't think I've ever experienced this.
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.
I'm on Google Fi and also don't use much data. I've recently had some significant struggles with Google Fi support over persistent issues with having a full strength connection and no data. This only ever happened when Sprint was the data carrier.
I'm on a MVNO provider and frequently experience issues where I have full signal like you mention, but nothing "works". Are you aware of any tools that can test the signal strength in comparison to... I guess download speed? Would be interesting to plot it out!
Interesting map, but entirely fictional on US Rt2 between East Glacier and West Glacier for ATT. There is no ATT coverage for 60+ miles, yet the map suggests complete coverage. Correct for Verizon and T-Mobile.
Yah, just looking at the signal edges should tell you a couple of those maps are "fictional". The tmobile map at least looks like a signal propagation map in areas that are flat, where they have a tower the map is roughly a circle, and in cities/mountain areas there are dark spots where there is a hole despite being entirely surrounded by signal.
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".
For those using these maps to determine the service you can expect from an MVNO operating on these providers, beware.
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.
Is it? I guess in US with its vast land mass and relatively low population density wired is very important, but I can tell you in many parts of Europe LTE and up are slowly becoming the norm even for high-volume, high-bandwidth usage such as for video streaming (not at 4k though ofc).
But surely most houses near cities in Europe has at least the option to get a fiber connection these days? Given the choice between LTE and fiber, I will choose fiber every day because otherwise you are basically competing with the radio spectrum and users thereof.
I don't know. My manager (household of 3) just switched to using Verizon 5G for their home internet. She's getting like pretty good speeds compared to what Xfinity offers (which was the only alternative).
> 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.
It’s definitely not accurate. I can show screenshots of over a dozen places with no service at all on AT&T, T-Mobile, or Verizon where this map claims coverage (and it’s supposedly filtered to be areas that have useable data, not just “coverage”).
As of a couple months ago, the T-Mobile coverage maps have been very accurate for both 4G and low/mid band 5G in my areas, and from what I've seen from others on the subreddit.
I’m so tired of maps that are grossly inaccurate like this. Since Christmas last year I’ve been traveling across the US working remotely from my RV. I’m very meticulous about checking over a dozen sources and still have been bitten by campgrounds without any (let alone useable) cell coverage on any carrier, despite having a high gain directional antenna. I spot checked a bunch of the places I’m aware of and just like all the other maps out there, this is just flat misleading and inaccurate.
Yeah, it's not accurate. My house has zero Tmobile signal. Lake Nona FL I remember also being completely devoid of signal. Both show as pink shaded on the map.
Coverage maps like these are no longer useful. I have "4 Bars" with extremely slow data rates constantly. My average speeds are about 1/10th what they were 7ish years ago (1.5 Mbps down vs 15 when networks were less loaded, "LTE" networks) as device density and usage has gone up.
We need data throughput maps, maybe even by time of day.
Having "coverage" doesn't mean you can actually do anything with it.
I question what the point of making this map was, when it isn’t even remotely accurate in so many places. I guess it makes the FCC feel like they did something and the carriers can continue saying how awesome they are and how they have brought broadband to the citizens as promised.
It's funny that US Cellular is listed here, and Dish/Boost isn't. Neither is Sprint, but it's LTE network is still relatively separate and something most T-Mobile customers can't access yet. Pretty useless map. Maybe comparing this with how much spectrum these companies have in an area might give more incentive to build where there's demand.
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.
The point I was trying to make is Dish has spectrum, MVNOs do not. Dish has artificially increased the cost of spectrum by holding on to it and not building their own network, and in the process also increased the cost of building a network for others.
This should really be normalized as MB/capita. Basic data/voice coverage in the vast wilderness is important for safety, but speed is really more relevant in more populated regions. Geographic maps like this aren't useful, especially without more powerful filtering tools (e.g. specifying a minimum speed & showing that coverage).
> Specifically, it shows where customers can expect to receive 4G LTE broadband service at a minimum user download speed of five megabits per second (5 Mbps) and a user upload speed of one megabit per second (1 Mbps)
I feel like this isn't a helpful quotation when I'm obviously saying "Now how do I see where minimum user download speed is 10 Mbps & upload is a minimum 3mbps"? A static map isn't useful for data analysis.
It also doesn't address that geographic maps aren't useful for showing deployment of services for people.
That's a pretty difficult question to answer, and the source data for this map certainly does not contain that information.
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?
Well the map is generated by a propagation model based on where the towers are, so if anything it should be even easier for them to generate such things than if it was driven by data collection.
These are charts for LTE coverage. You might be more interested in a 3G chart, which is sufficient for safety in wilderness and will have more coverage.
Apparently 3G is being phased out by AT&T (and I think most other providers have already left 3G) in the US.
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.
It’s been awhile since I’ve been near this space, but I know that several LTE-A vendors were at one point working on the low-bandwidth RAN tech for IOT in the 5G spec. Not sure if that changes anything about your post, but at least it’s not been totally ignored.
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