While 5G coverage remains relatively sparse even in dense urban areas across the US, the nation’s top mobile network operators claim their efforts will focus on providing a strong, reliable, and blazing fast signal in rural environments not too far down the line. T-Mobile in particular is insisting its 5G rollout scheduled to begin this week will create a brighter future for “everyone”, including almost 60 million rural residents, as long as the “Un-carrier” manages to close its mega deal taking over Sprint eventually.

Verizon, US Cellular, and T-Mobile are in the wrong

The FCC’s Enforcement Bureau field agents found that the minimum download speed predicted in official maps submitted by the three aforementioned carriers was only achieved sporadically on the actual ground. Specifically, a measly 45 percent of measurements performed on US Cellular’s 4G LTE network delivered the expected results, while T-Mobile and Verizon’s 63.2 and 64.3 percent totals are sure better but far from a desired 100 percent.

In other words, T-Mobile and Verizon’s 4G LTE networks provided lower than predicted speeds in 36.8 and 35.7 percent of cases respectively. Worse still, the FCC’s field agents couldn’t get a 4G LTE signal at all in no less than 38 percent of their US Cellular drive tests, as well as in 21.3 and 16.2 percent of instances on T-Mobile and Verizon respectively. That’s… truly awful, and in case you’re wondering, the Rural Wireless Association and other industry experts believe this general misrepresentation is intentional.

Its hidden goal may have been to prevent smaller carriers from securing government funding in the Mobility Fund Phase II auction designed to help precisely those areas currently lacking 4G LTE access. But all in all, the FCC’s investigation did not find a “sufficiently clear violation” of the MF-II data collection requirements to warrant any “enforcement action.”

$9 billion aid for rural 5G rollouts

While it might not be entirely clear if T-Mobile, Verizon, and US Cellular’s 4G LTE coverage misrepresentations were indeed intentional and nefarious, it seems pretty obvious that mistakes like these shouldn’t happen. Period. Unfortunately, the FCC is only taking vague “steps to make sure that coverage data the Commission and the public rely on is accurate” while terminating the Mobility Fund Phase II program.