The FCC recently announced that it is ready to launch its 5G Fund, which will provide $9 billion to bring better 5G cellular coverage to rural America. The FCC will be choosing the areas that are eligible for the 5G Fund using mapping data it collects from cellular carriers of where they claim to serve. An area is considered as served for purposes of the 5G Fund if at least one carrier is providing 5G cellular coverage with a speed of at least 7/1 Mbps.
That requirement for a specific speed should sound familiar, because for broadband grants, an area is considered covered if at least one ISP offers a speed of 100/20 Mbps. But there is one big difference between broadband coverage and cellular coverage – the mobility issue.
If the FCC broadband maps are accurate and one ISP really can deliver a broadband speed of at least 100/20 Mbps – then the FCC has deemed that customers to have an option to buy broadband. But cellular coverage is very different. People don’t necessarily choose a cellular carrier because the speeds are good at their home. They also care about the coverage when they are commuting, shopping, going to school, etc.
Most rural county seats or other sizable towns have several cellular carriers with good coverage in and around the towns. When I hear complaints about lack of rural cellular coverage, this often translates to mean that people who live in towns lose coverage when they drive into rural areas. When I look in detail at specific counties, I find many examples where the carriers that claim coverage in the rural areas are not the same carriers that most people in the towns are using.
When I look at the FCC cellular maps in my county, I find large areas where only one carrier claims coverage. The FCC maps show that in my county, there are pockets where only T-Mobile, UScellular, or Verizon claim service. If I cross a little further into the next county, I find large rural areas where the only carrier with claimed coverage is Dish.
This creates a dilemma that is not recognized in the FCC’s definition of cellular coverage. The reality is that delivery drivers, real estate agents, commuters, and anybody else who regularly moves between the city and rural areas must subscribe to multiple carriers to guarantee a working cellular signal. I subscribe to AT&T since, in my hilly city, Verizon and others have a dead zone at my house. But AT&T has the least amount of rural coverage in the county, and so my AT&T phone gets no signal when I travel outside the city. And when I say outside, I usually lose coverage with AT&T within a few short miles outside of town.
Earlier this year I interviewed a real estate agent who works in a rural county in Illinois. She has to carry phones subscribed to four different carriers in order to be able to have coverage at the various homes she is trying to sell. I’ve heard similar stories from many people who travel during the day such as delivery drivers and social workers.
This creates a big real life conundrum. According to the FCC maps there are no large areas of my county that don’t have at least one cellular carrier that claims coverage. This county is not going to get any new cell towers from the 5G fund. And yet everybody I know says they have poor cell coverage outside the city. No matter which carrier they use at their home, they quickly drive to areas outside the city where that carrier doesn’t work.
I understand that this issue is probably worse in hilly Appalachia where I live since there are dead zones everywhere caused by the hills. But this issue appears everywhere. I was working in a rural Minnesota County in a flat farming area where half the county can only get AT&T at home and the other half can get Verizon. This means a hassle and havoc for anybody who travels between the two areas.
What I am describing is the natural consequence of cellular signals that only carry for a limited distance from any tower. In my county, somebody who works around my county needs to be able to connect at times to AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Uscellular. The only way to do that is to have four phones or else pay huge fees for roaming.
I love the idea of the FCC’s 5G Plan since it will bring cellular coverage to areas where no carrier serves. But the 5G Plan is not going to solve the general public feeling that rural cellular coverage is terrible. I think that what is needed is for the FCC to implement roaming fees and policies that make it reasonably affordable to use your cellphone when you drive into an area served by somebody other than your home carrier.
I have AT&T on my phone and hotspots from both Verizon and T-Mobile for precisely this reason. There are large swaths of my area where only one of the carriers is a viable option. I’m thankfully doing it on the cheap ($52/mo total), but I would gladly trade the hotspot bills for roaming charges.
Another issue to consider:
Cell coverage, service levels, and technologies change frequently. Even a good speed test today does not ensure good service 6 months or a year from now. This is particularly troublesome in rural areas with little to no coverage and competition.
Verizon recently discontinued 4G LTE Home Internet service in the area where I live. When T-mobile and Sprint merged, 3G services were dropped. These changes eliminated service to many locations. Wireless technology and business priorities impact service and coverage with little consideration of the impact on subscribers.
IMHO, Fixed Wireless services, including CBRS, should therefore be viewed as a short-term solution with no commitment. They should not be eligible for government funding programs, which should focus on long-term committed services.
I’d like to make a separation on your statement. Cellular based Fixed Wireless I agree should not be eligible for gov funding. Cellular shouldn’t be used for fix wireless at all. It’s a poor solution at best. A money grab by the major players. Those of us operating dedicated fixed wireless networks using whatever tech is the best for the area, 3, 5, 6, 11, 24, 60, and 80 Ghz for example, are committed to long-term operations and can keep up with the latest tech much faster than a wired service. Wired tech times out as well, look at DSL. It’s dying in our town and what is the solution? AT&T is pointing people to their already overloaded fixed wireless. A town of 6k population is not big enough for them to deploy fiber in. Xfinity is hitting complete congestion most every evening and apparently have no immediate plans of upgrade. Why? Because upgrading a wired plant is a ton of money and they will not get any new money from this area. They literally have to upgrade out of their existing income. And their upgrade is much more all or none. I can take our busiest tower and upgrade just one sector to new tech and fix congestion in a matter of hours. Moving across our network one tower or even sector at a time. In one day I can have gigabit service ~5 miles outside of what was our network coverage yesterday.
We’ve been in successful business for over a decade with ~85% market penetration (in our rural coverage) and the only customers we lose are move outs or deaths. At what point can we admit that is a successful ISP solution? And we don’t have a monopoly, there are 5 other valid services in our rural area as well as Xfinity in town which we have a decent uptake on using. We have provided dedicated internet access to almost all of the major businesses in our area for years. Fiber build quotes to their locations have ranged from $500,000 to $750,000. With ~$2,500 of equipment we have delivered the same exact speed and quality of service they would get with fiber, for a fraction of the cost. We’re using the same fiber services to feed our core that they would be getting delivered if they paid that build price, and in 2024 alone we have logged 45 hours of down time on one provider. Because we aggregate multiple fiber upstreams and deliver to those DIA clients with multiple wireless links their downtime is a matter of minutes at the most in this year. If they had been on a single provider they would have seen the same 45 hours of downtime.
We aren’t interested in government funding, too small to gamble on all the major requirements, but our industry advantages get overlooked often.
How does your network accommodate future bandwidth demand?
We monitor usage versus capacity and upgrade ahead of time. It’s not like that is a difficult thing to do. There are solid 10Gbps point to point solutions and multi-gigabit point to multi-point solutions available if a tower moves past the 1Gbps threshold.
those upgrades are something the major cell carriers don’t seem to do much. I’ll go to areas that have been oversubscribed for a decade. They seem to generally be stuck at generational upgrades and with the capacity they start with.