
Mobile Providers’ Coverage Maps Investigation [pdf] - DyslexicAtheist
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-361165A1.pdf
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Frost1x
Now if they could only come to the conclusion that most physical ISPs are also
lying and or misleading consumers about broadband speed. I don't think that
will happen under Ajit Pai though...

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lr4444lr
That's an issue for Joseph Simons.

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basch
or the Attorney General, or a consumer protection agency. Or in some states
there are specific Utility Commissions, under which telephone should fall.

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pseudolus
The four recommendations contained within the report are a great starting
point but it can be expected that lobbying from various industry players will
result in only cosmetic change. Practically, the only solution is a cause of
action (beyond false advertising) relating to claimed coverage that cannot be
disclaimed and can be litigated by private citizens individually and
collectively. Once the lawsuits start piling up, honesty in coverage reporting
will start to prevail.

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finnthehuman
And it only took 15 years of Verizon lying about coverage in Vermont for
anyone to start to care.

Verizon is (or at least was) the best option there, but like any big company
operating in Vermont they forget anything outside Chittenden county exists.

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JaimeThompson
One thing that might solve this is to require that providers provide the
service they say they can to the customers location for their standard charged
install cost.

If they have to actually provide service to these locations I bet their
coverage maps will better reflect reality. In the case of penetration into
homes one can make allowances for that.

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Spooky23
Its outright fraud, as if you’re a big enough customer, carriers will show you
under NDA their real coverage estimates over a broad geography, give you
quality projections at any geographic point, or even do a drive and get real
time metrics in specific conditions.

So they know what’s real.

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mikestew
_So they know what’s real._

They know what's real because the company I used to work for (RootMetrics) did
those drives, and sold the data to Verizon, et. al.

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gregd
So, a carrier lies to a consumer about network coverage to lock them into a
contract, with no way out? Sounds like everyday, corporate America.

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ir77
i'm not sure that's true, at least that wasn't true about 8 years ago when we
moved accross the country and had verizon. it barely worked at our house,
verizon actually sent out a truck and they measured signal strength on our
street and did say that it was sub par and that they would let us out of our
contracts. about a month later they must have added towers in the area because
the speeds increased dramatically and we never ended up switching.

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Zigurd
Recently I was doing some research on the 5G roll-out. I found an interesting
stat regarding LTE in the US: LTE performance in the US is lower than most
places, but LTE coverage (supposedly) is generally good. I wonder if fudging
the coverage numbers accounts for this oddity.

This could have an influence on 5G roll-out since US carriers are heavily
indebted. If that's inhibiting capex _and_ if the US network is already behind
other nations' carriers' LTE networks because it was starved of capex, US
carriers might be extra cautious about spending on 5G, which is supposed to
raise opex, too.

