Mobile Broadband availability
As of November 2009, according to data from American Roamer, 3G service covers roughly 60% of U.S. land mass. In addition, approximately 77% of the U.S. population lived in an area served by three or more 3G service providers, 12% lived in an area served by two, and 9% lived in an area served by one. About 2% lived in an area with no provider.
These measures likely overstate the coverage actually experienced by consumers, since American Roamer reports advertised coverage as reported by many carriers who all use different definitions of coverage. In addition, these measures do not take into account other factors such as signal strength, bitrate or in-building coverage, and may convey a false sense of consistency across geographic areas and service providers. As with fixed broadband, most areas without mobile broadband coverage are in rural or remote areas. In fact, 3G build out is significantly lower in several states—in West Virginia, only 71% of the population has 3G coverage and in Alaska only 77% have coverage.
Additionally, American Roamer also suggests that 98% of businesses have 3G coverage today, although the data have similar limitations regarding signal strength, bitrate and in-building coverage. While most businesses have wireless broadband coverage,60 nearly 9% of rural business sites still do not have access, compared to less than 1% of business sites in urban or suburban areas. Finally, while a business location may have coverage, the value in mobile broadband comes when employees can access applications everywhere, which limits the importance of this particular coverage metric.
Several operators have announced upgrades to 4G broad- band networks. CITI notes that by 2013, Verizon Wireless plans to roll out Long Term Evolution (LTE)—a 4G mobile broadband technology—to its entire footprint, which currently
covers more than 285 million people. AT&T has announced it will test LTE in 2010 and begin roll-out in 2011. Through its partnership with Clearwire, Sprint plans to use WiMAX as its 4G technology. WiMAX has been rolled out in a few markets already, and Clear-wire plans to cover 120 million people with WiMAX by the end of 2010.
Mobile broadband network availability will change rapidly because of these deployments. Improved spectral efficiencies and significantly lower network latencies are some of the features of 4G networks that could lead to a better mobile broadband experience. For example, the spectral efficiency of mobile broadband networks could improve by over 50% with a transition from early 3G networks to 4G, while improvements relative to state-of-the-art 3G networks are likely to be a more modest 10–30%. The extent to which the effect of these advances are reflected in users’ experiences will depend on a variety of factors, including the total amount of spectrum dedicated to mobile broadband and the availability of high-speed backhaul connections from cellular sites.
Evaluating network availability and performance is much harder for mobile than for fixed broadband. For instance, the quality of the signal depends on how far the user is from the cell tower, and how many users are using the network at the same time. Therefore, the fact that users are in the coverage area of a 3G net- work does not mean they will get broadband-quality performance. Still, as with fixed broadband, it is clear that the speeds experienced on mobile broadband networks are generally less than advertised. Actual average download speeds have been reported
to be as low as 245 kbps, while speeds in excess of 600 kbps are advertised. Actual average upload speeds as low as 106 kbps have been reported, versus advertised rates of 220 kbps or higher.
Both mobile network performance and the availability of mobile broadband rely on the availability of spectrum. Carriers and other broadband-related companies agree that more spectrum will be needed to maintain robust, high-performing wireless broadband networks in the near future.
References
– Department of Education, Evaluation of the Enhancing Education Through Technology Program: Final Report
– Atkinson & Schultz, Broadband Report
