4G Reporting. Both AT&T and Verizon support reporting on 4G cellular speeds using a 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload test with a cell edge probability of 90% and a loading of 50%. Let me dissect that recommendation a bit. First, this means that customer has a 90% chance of being able to make a data connection at the defined edge if a cell tower coverage range.
The more interesting reporting requirement is the 50% loading factor. This means the reported coverage area would meet the 5/1 Mbps speed requirement only when a cell site is 50% busy with customer connections. Loading is something you rarely see the cellular companies talk about. Cellular technology is like most other shared bandwidth technologies in that a given cell site shares bandwidth with all users. A cell site that barely meets the 5/1 Mbps data speed threshold when it’s 50% busy is going to deliver significantly slower lower speeds as the cell site gets busier. We’ve all experienced degraded cellular performance at rush hours – the normal peak times for many cell sites. This reporting requirement is a good reminder that cellular data speeds vary during the day according to how many people are using a cell site – something the cellular companies never bother to mention in their many ads talking about their speeds and coverage.
The recommended AT&T maps would show areas that meet the 5/1 Mbps speed threshold, with no requirement to report faster speeds. I find this recommendation surprising because Opensignal reports the average US speeds of 4G LTE across America is as follows:
| 2017 | 2018 | |
| AT&T | 12.9 Mbps | 17.87 Mbps |
| Sprint | 9.8 Mbps | 13.9 Mbps |
| T-Mobile | 17.5 Mbps | 21.1 Mbps |
| Verizon | 14.9 Mbps | 20.9 Mbps |
I guess that AT&T favors the lowly 5/1 Mbps threshold since that will show the largest possible coverage area for wireless broadband. While many AT&T cell sites provide much faster speeds, my guess is that most faster cell sites are in urban areas and AT&T doesn’t want to provide maps showing faster speeds such as 15 Mbps because that would expose how slow their speeds are in most of the country. If AT&T offered faster speeds in most places, they would be begging to show multiple tiers of cellular broadband speeds.
Unfortunately, maps using the 5/1 Mbps criteria won’t distinguish between urban places with fast 4G LTE and more rural places that barely meet the 5 Mbps threshold – all AT&T data coverage will be homogenized into one big coverage map.
About the only good thing I can say about the new cellular coverage maps is that if the cellular companies report honestly, we’re going to see the lack of rural cellular broadband for the first time.
5G Broadband Coverage. I don’t think anybody will be shocked that AT&T (and the other big cellular companies) don’t want to report 5G. Although they are spending scads of money touting their roll-out of 5G they think it’s too early to tell the public where they have coverage.
AT&T says that requiring 5G reporting at this early stage of the new technology would reveal sensitive information about cell site location. I think customers who pony up extra for 5G want to know where they can use their new expensive handsets.
AT&T wants 5G coverage to fall under the same 5/1 Mbps coverage maps, even though the company is touting vastly faster speeds using new 5G phones.
It’s no industry secret that most of the announced 5G deployment announcements are mostly done for public relations purposes. For example, AT&T is loudly proclaiming the number of major cities that now have 5G, but this filing shows that they don’t want the public to know the small areas that can participate in these early market trials.
If 5G is a reasonable substitute for landline broadband, then the technology should not fall under the cellular reporting requirements. Instead, the cellular carriers should be forced to show where they offer speeds exceeding 10/1 Mbps, 25/3 Mbps and 100/10 Mbps, and 1 Gbps. I’m guessing a 5G map using these criteria would largely show a country that has no 5G coverage – but we’ll never know unless the FCC forces the wireless companies to tell the truth. I think that people should be cautious about speeding extra for 5G-capable phones until the cellular carriers are honest with them about the 5G coverage.