MF-II 4G LTE Coverage Maps Now Publicly Available

On Monday, May 18, 2020, the Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force (“Task Force”), along with the Office of Economics and Analytics, Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, and Wireline Competition Bureau, issued a Public Notice announcing the public release of carrier-specific 4G LTE coverage maps, derived from coverage data submitted under the Mobility Fund Phase II Challenge Process Order, along with a Staff Report in the MF-II Coverage Maps Investigation with the unredacted coverage maps (GN Docket No. 19-367). These maps are now available on the Commission’s website.

 

As a reminder, the Task Force released a February 2020 Public Notice proposing to release coverage maps based on carriers’ responses to the MF-II Challenge Process Order data collection and subsequent challenge process. The released maps are based on 4G LTE coverage data submitted by 47 mobile wireless carriers, but do not reflect the carriers’ complete mobile broadband coverage or include information about carriers’ specific spectrum band deployments for MF-II. Only AT&T objected to the public release of its data, arguing that releasing its maps would be “competitively harmful” because of the granularity of its data and because its submitted MF-II maps show less coverage than its public maps.

 

Therefore, the publicly available data now reflects 47 of the 48 Mobility Fund Phase II 4G LTE coverage maps, excluding AT&T, and are available here: https://www.fcc.gov/mobility-fund-phase-ii-mf-ii#data. The Commission believes that providing access to these maps will allow parties to make more informed comments in proceedings where the Commission proposes to collect mapping data.

 

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