Every time I see some company’s (T-Mobile, maybe) ads for 5G they at some point include a coverage map of the US, and it’s nearly solid for the whole continental US except for a big blank that to a quick glance aligns nearly perfectly with Nebraska. (I always forget to check to see what’s going on in HI and AK.)
So, what’s going on? I don’t know of any geographic feature peculiar to Nebraska vs. its adjoining states. I don’t believe the laws affecting the mechanics of 5G can possibly alter in a way neatly aligning with the state’s borders. So?
Did the state legislature made some ruling keeping it out, possibly due to subscribing to some “5G causes aliens to take over your brain” theory? Did the Governor of Nebraska’s wife cheat on him with the president of T-Mobile? Did Nebraska accidentally get left off the list of “U.S. States” that T-Mobile’s new technology installation people use?
Interesting that the “Solid Signal Blog” is trying to sell readers on AT&T as an alternative to T-Mobile and its 5G deficiencies in Nebraska - when a check of AT&T’s 5G coverage map shows an absence of 5G coverage not only in Nebraska and Iowa (with the exception of the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro area) but in a wide corridor up and down the midsection of the country.
Not that I’m a huge fan of T-Mobile (I spent several years of my life on the phone yesterday with Betty from Belarus*, trying to arrange a simple return of their old Internet gateway), but jumping from T-Mobile to AT&T would be like exchanging leprosy for the plague.
*she actually identified herself as “Ashley”, which must be a popular name these days in Belarus, Croatia or wherever.
That’s interesting but doesn’t really explain why Nebraska seemingly specifically doesn’t have widespread 5G coverage. The blog says that Sprint didn’t do well in rural areas, yet the rest of the Plains States have coverage in wide swaths that are just as rural.
West Virginia and Vermont are not terribly well-covered either, but they’re small enough that the overlap from the surrounding states catches much of their area anyway.
From my time with T-Mobile tech support years back, a large part of the issue is, as expected, money. Building towers and supporting them is expensive. If you have an area with lower population and lower service levels, is it better to invest in them, or in improving your ability to service in high population, high demand areas like cities?
Another thing about the maps (all carriers) is that in some areas, the towers are owned by local providers, who lease service as partners to major carriers. In those areas, the speed and bandwidth is determined by the contact with said owner and may be subject to considerable limitations.
Lastly, 5G specific, is that most (not all) of the 5G technologies being applied have very, very short range, which requires towers, well, everywhere (although normally smaller scale) - which has already become an issue for Omaha -
[ T-Mobile is actually an outlier here, as it’s 5G plans is mostly mid-range with slower speeds than the millimeter wave super-performers, but range more equivalent to 4G/LTE ]
TL;DR - it’s because there aren’t enough consumers in the rural areas making enough of a fuss to justify the costs in building/maintaining the infrastructure. Not exactly a new story.
I grew up in WV, and looking at the map it looks like the areas that aren’t covered are the more mountainous areas where very few people live. The major population areas along the Ohio River, both panhandles, and the center where the state capital is located (Charleston) all have coverage. The areas that don’t have coverage have populations that are in the single digit per square mile range. Those areas are also difficult to get to, with no decent roads in or out, and the mountainous terrain is far from ideal for radio transmission and reception.
There’s a reason they located a large radio telescope observatory in Green Bank, WV. It was a low population area with no radio noise before the government did anything. Now it’s a national government regulated “no radio” zone, with no cell phone and no wi-fi (and much to the annoyance of the locals it has become a haven for the paranoid technophobes). You’re not going to ever get cell phone coverage anywhere near Green Bank.
I’m not arguing for or against the law, just wanted to show part of the issue involved, given it’s FQ not IMHO. There have been a lot of arguments about 5G issues in heavy urban areas, as the mm-wave stuff is going to need to be nearly block by block and occasional issues of needing very targeted locations.
Which is one of the reasons you see articles about putting the antennas all over street lights as a compromise. But all of these apply to the urban issue - for the OP, it’s about why build towers that don’t pay for themselves unless there are non-monetary reasons to do so (legislation, government incentives, etc).
It’s hard enough to make my own language clear with autocorrect, sloppy typing, and occasional swype errors when using a touch-screen, and now I need to be responsible for poor language in journalism? Oy vey.
OK, Nebraska is mostly rural, got it. But Oklahoma, Kansas, and both Dakotas are also mostly rural. That still doesn’t answer why Nebraska is different from all of them.
I appreciate, and have learned from, various answers, but Nebraska is just SUCH an outlier. There MUST be some cause, some reason, for its status to be so different.
Now I’m wondering about deep, dark political machinations, though why? Who would care enough to create this difference on purpose?
This article mentions high fees for installing equipment on utility poles, but the quoted $2,000 is only in Lincoln and it doesn’t appear to be a statewide thing. It does say “high fees cities charge” but doesn’t further elaborate. It does seem like there’s probably some sort of regulatory or price hurdle, but then it should apply to all carriers and not just T-Mobile.
I wonder if Nebraska’s previous problems with cell phone towers (Chinese equipment suspected of spying on missile silos) have anything to do with their current lack of 5G coverage. Maybe no one one wants to use the old towers, requiring some of the infrastructure to be rebuilt from the ground up?
It may also be related to money allocated over the years for cell coverage and then rural broadband access being wasted. Nebraska Public Service Commissioner Crystal Rhoades is mentioned in the following article as saying “there was a lack of accountability over how the money was spent, allowing big firms to use their USF funds for administration and other expenses, rather than for rolling out broadband for rural residents, which generates less profit.”
“The dirty secret isn’t that we don’t have enough money, it’s we don’t have enough oversight,” Rhoades said. “It’s been all carrot and no stick.”
Discussion on Reddit of Nebraska’s lack of 5G coverage mentions that Viaero owns many/most of the towers, and that is the company with the Huawei hardware linked to Chinese espionage efforts.