Remembering Our Microwave Past

Somebody sent me a link to an interesting article posted on 99% Invisible, a website associated with a podcast that looks at “the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world” The article covers a book called The Long Lines that documents the abandoned infrastructure of the national microwave network built by AT&T that predated the eventual long-haul fiber networks that now connects us.

The AT&T microwave network was built in the 1950s. The first long-haul microwave route put into service was between New York and Chicago, and went live on September 1, 1950. Over the next few years, microwave routes were established across the country.

The networks were enabled by the high-powered klystrons developed during World War II, plus new microwave technologies that allowed for the simultaneous transmission of multiple channels of data. A klyston is a vacuum tube that amplifies a signal from a low-power level to a higher one. The klystron system enabled the creation of microwave links with enough power to carry not only voice calls, but television signals. The technology was developed at Bell Labs, and the microwave radios were manufactured by Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of AT&T.

The AT&T microwave network enabled the first nationwide broadcasts of television shows and news events. The first television event sent was a speech by President Harry Truman from the San Francisco Peace Conference in September 1951, which was then broadcast by the early television stations in major cities across the country. The first regular TV show that used the microwave network was Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now, broadcast in November 1951.

The AT&T microwave network led to some of the early success of television networks since it allowed for content that people had never seen before, like live Saturday football games from across the country. From the 1950s through the 1970s, practically all national programming was transmitted through the microwave network.

The microwave network wasn’t the only transmission network used by AT&T. The company had built coast-to-coast copper networks, and Alexander Bell made the first transcontinental phone call from New York City to San Francisco on January 25, 1915. This network was eventually enhanced with long-line coaxial networks, but those networks didn’t have the capacity to support television signals.

The microwave network consisted of towers built between thirty and forty miles apart, which accommodated the need for a line-of-sight connection. Interestingly, the core network electronics nodes of the network were built to supposedly withstand a nuclear explosion, since the microwave network also carried military traffic. These core locations included underground bunkers for electronics, staff, and backup power generators.

Anyone of a certain age remembers these towers, which either disappeared or were repurposed for cellular. Each tower had multiple giant horn antennas used to transmit and receive data. I remember in the 1970s that it was always easy to spot the AT&T building as you drove into a city because of the giant antennas on top, like the picture at the top of the blog of the antennas of the AT&T building in Minneapolis.

AT&T isn’t the only company that used a microwave network. MCI got its start as a competitor to AT&T by carrying telephone calls using its own microwave network that was often built along railroad rights-of-way. That network supported the early competition that eventually resulted in a competitive telecom industry.

The microwave towers were eventually replaced by the now-familiar fiber routes that were built starting in the late 1970s, and the greater capacity of fiber quickly made the microwave network obsolete.

AT&T – No Rush for 6G?

Jenifer Robertson, Executive Vice President and General Manager of Mass Markets for AT&T, gave a lengthy interview at CTIA’s annual summit in D.C. that led to an article by Rob Pegoraro of Light Reading. The interview covered a range of topics and is worth reading. I was struck by a comment at the end of the article where Robertson said,  “I don’t have any data that tells me consumers are chomping at the bit for 6G.”

Part of that reason is that the AT&T 5G network is performing well. A big part of that performance came earlier this year when the company integrated the midband spectrum purchased from EchoStar. I’m an AT&T subscriber, and I saw my 5G cellular speeds more than double after that upgrade.

AT&T also moved further along the path towards fully implementing 5G. The company announced it deployed its first 5G standalone in October 2025. That includes launching new features that the company is labeling as 5G Advanced, which includes network slicing and other features that were part of the original 5G specification.

It’s not unusual that AT&T is still implementing 5G features in 2026. The cellular industry has implemented a new G generation of cellular technology every decade, starting with the introduction of 1G in 1979. It’s always taken much of each new decade to fully implement the newest generation of technology. You might remember that ten years ago, the big carriers were still implementing some of the specification features of 4G.

Robertson’s comment on 6G is a big shift from the way that the big carriers talked about 5G a decade ago. The hype for upgrading to 5G started in 2016, and folks probably remember that you couldn’t read an industry publication or go to a tradeshow without being bombarded about the upcoming miracles that were going to be unleased with 5G. We’re not seeing that same kind of excitement for 6G, and I would bet that the average cellular customer hasn’t even heard of 6G.

I also remember the market reaction when 5G was introduced in 2019. The first introduction of 5G only included a small piece of the new 5G specification, and the major real-world difference from 4G was that carriers put 5G connections on a different set of spectrum. Early adopters praised 5G, mostly because they were connecting on empty networks, but within a year, that advantage disappeared as the 5G spectrum got flooded with users.

There is a lot to brag about with 5G performance. Speeds increased dramatically over 4G, and in most urban markets, 5G speeds are at 200-300 Mbps download, or faster. There is one big downside to 5G in rural areas, in that the higher spectrum for 5G doesn’t carry as far, and so cellular network coverage in rural areas is shrinking. This will be dramatically noticeable when the carriers eventually decommission 4G.

By the time 5G was released to the public, every tech head wanted the new technology. This led to a huge surge in handset sales. There is no doubt that the equipment and handset vendors will want a big push for 6G. But there aren’t many advantages of 6G that will excite consumers. Most of the advantages of 6G benefit the carriers more than the public. Consider the following touted benefits. 6G will:

  • Enable immersive communication and human-machine interactions. That would enable eXtended Reality (XR), remote multi-sensory telepresence, holographic communications, haptic sensors and actuators, and multi-sensory interfaces.
  • Allow the connection of massive numbers of devices at a cell site. This will supposedly unleash more smart city applications, smart cars, environmental monitoring, and agricultural sensors.
  • Ease connections to smart machines for the remote operation of robots, autonomous factories, and the creation of digital twins for factories, health care, and other complex use cases.
  • Have peak theoretical data rates between 50 and 100 Gbps.
  • Target air interface latency between 0.1 ms and 1 ms.
  • Will introduce AI-related features to support distributed data processing, distributed learning, AI computing, AI model execution, and AI model inference.

Almost none of these new benefits will excite the average cellular customer. These upgrades mostly open up new markets for the carriers. The big carriers saw similar claims for 5G fizzle in the market. Folks aren’t interested in buying separate cellular subscriptions for smart devices, and the battle for connecting multiple devices has largely been won by WiFi. Faster speeds will benefit FWA home cellular, but will not be seen as an important benefit for cellphone users.

It’s going to be interesting to see if AT&T and the other big carriers stay lukewarm about paying for the upgrades to 6G. That would break the cycle of a new generation of cellular technology every ten years and would put equipment and handset vendors into a tailspin.

New Rules for FCC Maps

At the end of April, the FCC released a Report and Order and a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking related to its broadband mapping processes. There are no earth-shattering changes in the order and this is part of the ongoing process of finetuning the FCC broadband maps.

The following are the changes that were ordered:

  • The FCC ordered that the definition of broadband be the same for the BDC map collection process as the Form 477 process where ISPs and carriers report customers. Currently, there are some types of customers included in the BDC maps that are not included on the Form 477.
  • The FCC is eliminating the process, where an ISP or carrier must be notified of challenges to the map fabric and given a chance to respond. The map fabric is the database of potential customer locations. Eliminating this extra step will hopefully speed up the process of implementing challenges to the fabric.
  • The FCC shifted the responsibility to the FCC staff (or its mapping vendor) to remove demonstrably bad data from the BDC maps rather than requiring the ISP or carrier to make changes.

In the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the FCC asked for feedback from the industry on a number of questions:

  • The FCC asks about changing the map restoration This is the process where ISPs or carriers can reenter data into the FCC maps that was removed due to map challenges or other FCC actions. We now know that a lot of changes were made to the maps as a result of the BEAD map challenges, and the FCC is asking if there can be a simpler process for ISPs or carriers to fix the maps.
  • The FCC asks if it should eliminate the requirement for ISPs to report “grandfathered” broadband coverage, meaning locations where maximum download speeds are slower than 25 Mbps.
  • The FCC also asks about eliminating the requirement to report 3G cellular coverage.
  • The FCC asks if the rules for fixed wireless reporting should be changed when reporting the ‘buffer size’, which is the maximum distance an ISP wants to claim to be able to provide service from a tower site.
  • The FCC asks if it should change or relax the assumption that fixed wireless providers should assume the height of a customer receiver at a height no higher than 7 meters.
  • The FCC currently requires BDC providers to retain all of the backup for reported data for three years, and it asks if that should be something different.
  • The FCC is seeking comments on changes that would speed up and streamline the map challenge process. There are questions related to individual map challenges, bulk challenges, and crowdsourced challenges.
  • The FCC asks if there are needed changes to the mobile verification and audit processes.
  • Finally, the FCC asks if certain kinds of data should automatically be considered to be confidential, rather than requiring ISPs and carriers to seek confidentiality with each data submittal.

Proposed New Rules for Federal Grants

The Office of Management and Budget has proposed new rules for the Guidance of Federal Financial Assistance. These proposed rules would apply to a large percentage of federal grants awarded to States or directly to grantees. In the broadband world, the new rules would apply to grants made by the FCC, NTIA, U.S. Treasury, and the USDA. They would also apply to any secondary grants made through states, such as state broadband grants made using underlying federal funds. That means these rules impact BEAD, RDOF, ReConnect, Capital Project Fund grants, and the various NTIA broadband grants. The new rules would also apply to any payments made from federal programs to the public, which are not strictly considered as grants, such as E-Rate payments made to schools and libraries, and Lifeline payments made to reduce broadband bills.

This blog covers a few highlights of the proposed changes. For more details, see this comprehensive summary created by the Benton Institute. Comments on the proposed rules are due by July 13. The new rules are proposed to go into effect on October 1, 2026.

The new rules are intended to meet three objectives. This supposedly will improve transparency, accountability, and oversight. OMB says the changes will reduce recipient burden. Probably most importantly, OMB is taking charge of grants, and what the agency used to issue as guidance will now become binding regulation.

The following are some of the most important changes that could affect broadband:

  • One of the most consequential proposed changes is that the new rules expand the ability for federal agencies to cancel a grant mid-stream. This would apply to all discretionary grants (which are grants where a federal agency chooses the grant winners). There is a carve out and special rules for BEAD, for the CHIPs Act, and for block grants, formula grants, and disaster recovery grants. This is a huge change, because it means the federal government can stop a broadband infrastructure grant at any time – making it even riskier to take grant funding.
  • There would no longer be any fixed amount awards, and all grant expenditures have to be substantiated by invoices.
  • All grant recipients would have to participate in the E-Verify system, which would mean verifying the eligibility of employees and all subcontractors for receiving payments from federal funds. This new requirement also seems aligned with the new requirement that no grant funds can be used to reimburse payments to any person or company from a “covered” country, meaning countries on a list of countries that can be changed at any time.
  • The new rules completely eliminate any grant provisions that would promote DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility) based on race or sex.
  • Agencies and grant recipients will be expected to ensure that federal grant funds are not used to promote or support “theories of disparate-impact liability”. In plain English, that means grants can’t be used in a way that results in any discrimination by race, sex, or other protected characteristics. Grant recipients are also not to discriminate on the basis of “viewpoint, content, or subject matter of speech”, including political, ideological, or religious affiliation.
  • The new rules add a new layer of bureaucracy by requiring that every grant be approved by a senior political appointee. All grant awards are also expected to demonstrably advance the President’s policy priorities.
  • All else being equal, grants should be awarded to entities with the lowest indirect cost rates.
  • Pass-through entities (like a State Broadband Office) must ensure that grant recipients do not take actions that could damage the reputation of the grant pass-through agency or the federal government.

What are the practical results if these changes are implemented? While one stated goal is to reduce the burden on grant recipients, these changes would significantly increase paperwork. The proposed rules also increase the risk of accepting grant funding since a grant can be canceled at any time for violating the new political and social grant rules. Probably the most insidious proposed rules are that grant awards would have to pass several political sniff tests to be awarded, rather than being made on merit.

The big picture is that this is a clear attempt by OMB, which is part of the Executive branch, to take over the grant process. The vast majority of grants are created by federal legislation, and this would allow the executive branch to override grant rules created by Congress.

Market Consolidation Continues

It looks like industry mergers and acquisition activity is in high gear lately. It’s hard to remember a week when there wasn’t a press release about upcoming M&A activity in the telecom sector, and I have been writing a similar blog every six months. Following is some of the most recent activity.

In the ISP Space. T-Mobile announced it entered two joint ventures to acquire 50% of three U.S. fiber businesses – GoNetspeed, Greenlight Networks, and i3 Broadband. T-Mobile seems to be gobbling up last-mile fiber properties all over the country.

TDS Telecom announced plans to buy Granite State Communications, a telco in New Hampshire with more than 11,000 service addresses.

Truvista Fiber is buying the municipal fiber network from the City of Commerce, Georgia, with plans to expand to reach residential customers.

Middle-Mile / Networks. Zayo just closed on the $4.25 billion acquisition of the fiber assets of Crown Castle Fiber. This adds 90,000 miles of fiber to Zayo’s U.S. network.

The managed service providers Spectrotel and Airespring announced a merger to become more competitive in serving business customers.

GCI in Alaska is acquiring Q Gateway Intermediate Holdings (Quintillion), a fiber infrastructure provider in the state. The purchase brings 1,800 miles of subsea and terrestrial fiber, along with active construction on additional routes.

Lumen is buying the cloud network company Alkira for $475 million. This brings expertise in AI programmable networking. Lumen has obviously decided to beef up its enterprise business now that it recently closed on the sale of last-mile fiber customers to AT&T.

Vendors. Inseego, a wireless edge vendor, is buying the FWA business line from Nokia.

Render Networks is acquiring mPower, a company that makes management tools for electric and water utilities.

Satellite. Amazon announced plans to purchase Globalstar for $11 billion. This jump-starts Amazon’s entry into the direct-to-device market.

The Mother of all Merger Rumors. In what would be the biggest telecom merger ever, Fierce Networks had a story about analysts at New Street Research who are speculating that a merger between Comcast and Charter makes a lot of sense. They said that Charter is still open to further acquisitions after it closes on the merger with Cox Communications. The article even speculated on Charter being an acquisition target for T-Mobile or SpaceX.

We can’t forget the three big ISP mergers of Charter/Cox, AT&T/Lumen Fiber, and Verizon/Frontier. The biggest ISPs are suddenly getting a lot larger.

An AI Digital Inclusion Research Tool

In many ways, we are at the heyday of broadband. Huge numbers of households are being reached by new broadband networks funded by numerous state and federal grants. Many non-profit groups are working hard to make sure people have the computers and other devices needed to take advantage of connectivity. Many other people are teaching people how to use computers in order to navigate the online world. Digital navigators are helping folks find broadband connections they can afford.

Unfortunately, big changes in the federal government have meant that the funding for many of these activities is quickly evaporating. The administration killed the $2.75 billion Digital Equity Fund, which would have funded digital inclusion work around the country. There is still $21 billion of potential BEAD non-deployment funding, but that money seems to be stuck in limbo, and the general feeling is that even if some of these funds are released, they will only be available for specific purposes that might not include digital inclusion.

It has always been clear that the big federal funds aimed at digital inclusion work were only going to carry the national digital inclusion effort for a few years, but that funding would have given the digital inclusion practitioners the time to mature and be ready in a few years to self-fund and stand on their own. Folks involved in digital inclusion are now scrambling to survive after the abrupt end of funding.

One way forward is for digital inclusion efforts to become more efficient and better organized. That’s not as easy as it might sound. The digital inclusion ecosystem is still relatively new, and there are a lot of different groups in any state with different approaches for tackling digital inclusion solutions. Becoming more efficient might mean digital inclusion practitioners joining forces to gain efficiency. Being efficient with less funding will mean choosing projects where digital inclusion work will produce the best local results.

I’m working with some folks in North Carolina who have developed a tool that can help digital inclusion efforts be more efficient. The core of the tool was developed by Brian Rathbone of Broadband Catalyst. He’s named the new tool Marco Map AI, which is appropriate because it’s a gateway to discovery. This tool starts by gathering every possible data source and database available that has information that could inform the digital inclusion effort. In North Carolina, that means dozens of different data sources.

Some of the data is what everybody would expect, like the FCC broadband maps and U.S. Census data. But there is also a wide range of data available for things like health care data, housing, the location of anchor institutions, and education.

When Brian first brought the data together, it quickly became apparent that the sheer magnitude of the data could be overwhelming, and even a good researcher has a problem making sense of multiple disparate datasets. Brian’s first step to make it easier to understand data was to map everything. It turns out that the human mind can more quickly grasp a map of data points than tables of facts. But even mapping is overwhelming when there are dozens of attributes being mapped.

It turns out that the missing tool to make sense of the huge pile of data is AI. AI can be used to find patterns in complex data sets that a researcher would probably never find on their own. Perhaps the best way to explain how this works is with an example.

Let’s say that a hospital wants to do a better job on improving outcomes for diabetes patients in the region it serves. Research and hospital experience show that enrolling diabetes patients in home monitoring while staying in touch through telemedicine can greatly improve patient outcomes – and hospitals know that proactive care saves money for patients and the hospital. Hospitals already know the patients they are connected to, but how do they find the other people in the region who could benefit from proactive care?

The Marco software with the AI assistance can answer this question in a way that I don’t think a human researcher can easily do. The system can cross-check all of the factors related to given question. It would start with a map of areas that have a higher prevalence of diabetes. It would overlay this with factors related to broadband and telehealth. For example, what areas have good or poor broadband technologies? What is the level of home broadband subscriptions and computer ownership? Where is cellular technology adequate to handle the monitoring needs? How do households incomes and poverty levels impact the ability of homes to afford a broadband connection?

The AI system can answer incredibly detailed questions in a way that I’ve not seen done by other research. For example, you could use the software to identify the neighborhoods that are within twenty miles of a hospital or clinic, where the prevalence of diabetes is higher than average, where people have broadband or good cellular coverage, and where incomes are high enough that many people can afford broadband. After answering this kind of question, it’s easy to quickly modify the parameters of the questions to fine-tune the results until it provides what the hospital system wants to know. There are endless questions that could be posed.

This is amazing tool for policy makers and those who are trying to tackle broadband access or digital inclusion issues. I highly recommend anybody interested in this tool to contact Broadband Catalysts.

The Pending Encryption Crisis

At the recent Fiber Connect 2026 conference, Michio Kaku, a professor at the City University of New York, predicted that quantum computers would be able to break the current encryption on digital telecom networks within three years. Other experts don’t think it will be that soon, but there is almost universal agreement that it will happen sometime in the 2030s.

There are a variety of types of encryption used in broadband networks. Most voice, text, and data being transmitted across networks use symmetrical encryption like the AES standard (Advanced Encryption Standard). The vast majority of this encryption uses AES-128, which uses a 128-bit encryption key. AES-256 uses a 256-bit encryption key and is mostly used to transmit things like top-secret military data or for long-term data storage of important data.

Carriers use public-key encryption when handing data between carriers on the web. This generally means using the older cryptography method, RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adleman), or the newer ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptography).

It’s expected that quantum computers will first be able to crack public-key cryptography like RSA and ECC. Quantum computers will have a bigger challenge cracking symmetrical encryption. It’s all going to depend on the strength of the quantum computers. For example, scientists calculate that a quantum computer with 10,000 qubits could crack ECC encryption, but it would take 1,000 days to do so. But a larger computer with 26,000 qubits could crack ECC encryption in a day. The most intense forms of encryption might only be cracked by a quantum computer with 100,000 qubits.

There are still breakthroughs needed for quantum computers to have the power to reasonably decrypt the most common forms of encryption. Today, there is a high level of errors introduced inside the quantum computer, and scientists are working to lower the error rate. The challenge of operating a quantum computer also increases in complexity as the number of qubits is increased. There are working quantum computers in labs with as many as 6,100 qubits, but none of these is working well enough to be used for widespread decryption.

The good news is that there are ways to defeat decryption by quantum computers. The term post-quantum encryption is being used to describe algorithms and techniques specifically designed to block decryption by quantum computers. Quantum computers function best by being able to simultaneously process large numbers of calculations, which makes them perfect for figuring out encryption techniques.  Post-quantum algorithms use complex algebraic structures like lattices and hash functions to confound a quantum computer. The math problems used in the encryption are designed to be too difficult for quantum computers to solve.

The computer world has been working on post-quantum computing and should be able to fend off quantum computers when the time comes. While that is comforting, there is still some bad news. Bad actors have been hacking companies and scraping data off the web to store and wait for the day when quantum computers can decrypt the data. This is being referred to as “harvest now, decrypt later”, and the folks doing that figure there is a lot of encrypted data today that will still be relevant a decade from now. That might mean things like banking and medical records or corporate secrets that can be damaging if ever known by bad actors. This “harvest now” mindset might explain many of the cases where companies have been hacked with no obvious bad results.

The bottom line is that quantum computers are going to get good enough to decrypt current encryption techniques. Most large quantum computers are still in labs and not readily available to the public. Computers and networks are being readied with new post-quantum encryption techniques that should be able to thwart real-time data hacking. The biggest danger from quantum computers might be the ability to decrypt the mountains of stored data that has been encrypted using today’s algorithms.

Are Broadband Prices Dropping?

The FCC recently asked for comments in Docket 26-78, which is the latest iteration of its biennial report to Congress that looks at the State of Competition in the Communications Marketplace. Various industry players provided input to the FCC on issues related to competition and pricing for broadband and cellular service, with fewer caring about voice and cable service.

One of the issues widely discussed in this year’s filing is broadband prices. Some of the big ISPs continue to assert that broadband prices are dropping. For example, USTelecom refers to a report it generated that asserts that Internet prices have fallen for the eleventh straight year. I’ve written about the annual USTelecom reports before, and a big part of their assertion comes from looking at the price over time of the cost per megabit of speed being sold. On that basis, prices are dropping, mostly because ISPs have been increasing the speeds being delivered at a faster pace than prices.

One set of comments came from the Benton Institute, which described the issue perfectly. They cite the example that the price for 200 Mbps was around $50 in 2021. Many ISPs have unilaterally increased speeds without increasing price, and the average price for 400 Mbps in 2025 was also around $50. While the cost per megabit cut in half, customers are still paying $50.

Of course, ISPs don’t sell, and consumers don’t buy broadband by the megabit. Benton made a humorous observation on the big ISP’s focus on cost per megabit. Benton cites a USTelecom comment that the price per megabit for gigabit service is around 7 cents per megabit, or $70 per month. If USTelecom members are happy with that price, then why aren’t they applying that price to slower products so that 200 Mbps would cost $14 per month?

Perhaps the best discussion of prices in the docket comes from a study by John P. Horrigan, PhD, which is attached to the Benton comments. Horrigan takes a neutral look at prices and found that the weighted average for all broadband products increased by 4.8% from 2024 to 2025. Horrigan found that broadband prices for products slower than gigabit declined 8.5% from 2024 to 2025, with prices increasing for faster products.

Horrigan found that low-price options are disappearing from the market. When the ACP plan was operating, 9% pf broadband being sold was priced at $30 or less. He says this fell to just 3% of the market in 2025. This also holds true for plans with slower speeds. In 2022, 57% of consumers were buying Internet at a speed of 100 Mbps or less. In 2025, that has dropped to 32% of the market.

While the Benton Institute comments hint at it, I think most other comments in the docket are missing the bigger picture. Customers are choosing to migrate to lower-cost broadband options. One doesn’t have to look any further than the phenomenal success of FWA cellular. Since 2022, 16.5 million customers have subscribed to FWA cellular. While some of these customers live in rural areas where FWA is the only fast broadband option, I think a vast majority of these folks choose FWA to save money. The list prices for FWA home broadband are in the $50-$60 dollar range. However, there are big discounts for bundling with cellular service and for using autopay, and it’s possible to buy FWA home broadband for as little as $20-$30 per month.

Any analysis that just looks at prices for specific speeds over time will account for folks willing to take less speed for a lower bill. The big ISPs don’t want to talk about this, but there is no other way to discuss the huge success of FWA without talking about customers self-selecting lower prices.

How Good is Rural Cellular Coverage – Part II

Yesterday’s blog looked at AT&T cellular coverage in a typical rural county in Illinois and included the following map. The map shows where AT&T can provide 5G coverage in a moving vehicle in the dark areas, and where somebody standing stationary outdoors could get a 5G signal in the lighter colored areas.

Let’s look at the maps for the other two major carriers in the same areas. The first map below is T-Mobile, and the second is Verizon.

These maps show typical coverage. The two carriers support 5G in moving vehicles in and close to towns and cities. The light colored areas are where somebody standing outdoors can likely get a 5G signal. An indoor cellular coverage map would likely not be a lot larger than the dark areas.

Taken altogether, these maps show a typical rural story of cellular coverage. Cell carriers rarely share towers, and each carrier is on different towers and has different coverage. All three carriers have areas where they have no 5G coverage, and somebody subscribed to any one carrier in this county would find a lot of dead zones. All three carriers have little or no coverage in the northwest sector. These maps show something that every rural delivery driver knows – to work in rural America means carrying multiple cellphones subscribed to different carriers.

When Chairman Carr says that 96.8% of households have 5G coverage, we have to put that into perspective. Over 80% of Americans live in cities and suburbs and likely have good cell coverage. Another substantial percentage live in smaller towns that happen to have at least one cell tower. In this particular county, 60% of people live in incorporated towns and villages, meaning there are a lot of rural residents.

What’s the point of these two blogs? The FCC considers this County to have good 5G coverage. That assumption comes largely from looking at the combined coverage of the three carriers shown for somebody standing stationary outdoors. The light colored areas of the three maps combined cover most of the county.

If the FCC ever decides to finally launch the 5G Fund for Rural America, this county will likely not be a candidate for a grant to build new cell towers. That’s unfortunate, because I estimate that 30% of the residents of this county would say they have poor cellular coverage. They will say that they don’t have good coverage indoors, and no matter which carrier they subscribe to, they hit dead spots when they drive around the county. The FCC’s assertion that 96.8% of homes have good 5G coverage can be supported by the FCC maps – but those maps don’t show the reality of the way that people judge cellular coverage.

How Good is Rural Cellular Coverage – Part I

The FCC has opened a docket that periodically looks at ways to improve the FCC’s broadband and cellular maps. As part of that docket, Chairman Brendan Carr issued the following statement: On the mobile side, 96.8 percent of locations have access to mobile 5G services of at least 7/1 Mbps.

To put that into perspective, there are roughly 116.7 million total passings counted in the FCC maps, and the Chairman is saying that all except 3.7 million have good access to 5G. The Chairman’s statement can be supported by the FCC cellular maps, but I think the reality in rural areas is far different than what is shown on the maps. I’m not saying that the FCC maps are a lie – because I think it’s likely that the maps represent what the FCC asked carriers to report. But I think the maps tell a different story than what Chairman Carr is pushing, and I don’t think anywhere near 96.8% of folks in the country would say they have good cellular coverage.

Let’s look at the FCC maps for 5G coverage in an actual county in Illinois. I didn’t pick this county because it doesn’t have good cell coverage. The coverage in the counties around it would all tell the same story. One thing to note about this county is that there are homes located in all parts of the county – the areas with no coverage on these maps are not parklands or forests.

The following map shows AT&T 5G coverage from the FCC cellular maps. The FCC asks carriers to show coverage in two ways. The darker orange areas are where AT&T claims that 5G coverage will work in a moving vehicle. The lighter areas are where AT&T says that a customer can receive 5G when standing stationary outdoors. AT&T is claiming no 5G coverage in the gray areas.

This AT&T map is typical of rural cell coverage. Cell towers are located roughly in the center of the dark-colored areas, and those areas mostly covering towns and cities. Anybody who understands cellular technology understands that speeds drop quickly with distance from a cell site. The cellular download data speeds at the center of the dark areas could easily be as fast as 300 Mbps. But within two miles of a tower, speeds drop to around 25 Mbps. 5G speeds and coverage in the light-colored areas are a lot slower and spottier, and as you get to the outer parts of the light-colored areas, farthest from the towers, it’s likely that somebody would have to move around in their yard to find the sweet spot where they could make a call.

What this map doesn’t measure, and the FCC doesn’t ask about, is indoor cellular coverage. It’s a general rule of thumb that indoor speeds are roughly half of outdoor speeds. You can easily test this by taking an outdoor cellular speed test and then an indoor test away from a window (turn off your WiFi). If the carriers were to map expected indoor cellular coverage, the areas with indoor coverage would be a lot smaller than the light-colored areas shown for outdoor coverage.

When you ask a rural resident what good cell coverage means, they will define it as working in their home and working in their car. With that definition, AT&T doesn’t have great 5G coverage in the county for people who live or drive outside the dark circles.

Tomorrow’s blog will compare AT&T’s coverage to T-Mobile and Verizon to show the overall picture of cell coverage in this county.