The FCC is calling out T-Mobile and Verizon for bad coverage maps

If you’ve ever thought about switching carriers, you’ve likely spent some time looking at coverage maps. These maps are extremely important tools for consumers, but they are controlled by the carriers. They are required to keep these maps accurate and the FCC recently discovered some of the carriers are lying.

Wow.

The FCC tested Verizon, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular 4G LTE coverage in rural areas and found that THE CARRIERS WERE LYING ABOUT COVERAGE about 40% of the time. https://t.co/XqaU6r4Xpa

Takeaway: Cellular coverage maps are absolute shit. $VZ $TMUS $USM

— Mike Dano (@mikeddano) December 4, 2019

The FCC tested T-Mobile, Verizon, and US Cellular with 10,000 miles of driving and 25,000 tests. The results ended up being far below the coverage that the carriers were claiming. T-Mobile and Verizon didn’t match the minimum download speeds in 35% of the tests. US Cellular fared even worse, failing to match the speeds in over 50% of tests. The FCC also found that in areas where 4G LTE was listed on the maps, T-Mobile failed to provide it more than 1/5 of the time, while Verizon was slightly better and US Cellular was worse.

This is obviously a pretty big deal. Coverage maps are important when you’re trying to figure out where you’ll get coverage. They can be the difference between choosing one carrier over the other. If you can’t trust the coverage map, how are you supposed to know where you’ll have good coverage? It can especially be annoying if you have bad coverage and the carrier repeatedly tells you it should be fine.

So what is the FCC going to do? The report recommends an Enforcement Advisory, which will lay out a list of warnings and consequences. The FCC will also continue to investigate the situation, so we probably aren’t hearing the last about this.

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Via: Android Central

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