The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) found that Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular all presented exaggerated LTE coverage maps. However, the FCC says that it won’t penalize them for doing so, in apparent contradiction to the watchdog’s stated policy…

FCC tests found the speeds necessary to qualify for LTE were only met between 45% and 64.3% of the time.

FCC policy is that such violations ‘must be met with meaningful consequences,’ yet arsTechnica reports that the organization is not planning to apply any penalties as it can’t be certain the exaggerations were deliberate.

In other words, because all the carriers use the same models to calculate download speeds, then they don’t get fined even though the models result in demonstrably exaggerated LTE coverage.

But there won’t be any meaningful consequences for Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. “Based upon the totality of the circumstances, the investigation did not find a sufficiently clear violation of the MF-II [Mobility Fund Phase II] data collection requirements that warranted enforcement action,” an FCC spokesperson told Ars via email.

In a call with reporters, a senior FCC official said that commission staff was unable to determine whether the carriers’ exaggerations were deliberate. The official said that the investigation did not establish a clear violation of a specific rule. The FCC official said that maps submitted by carriers were based on industry-standard propagation models and that the FCC’s own tests made it clear that those industry models do not reflect on-the-ground experience.

arsTechnica also suggests that the FCC deliberately buried news of this decision.

Update: T-Mobile told us that consumers have never seen the maps, and made the following statement:

Instead, Pai’s office announced the issuance of the investigative report in the third paragraph of a press release titled, “Chairman Pai announces plan to launch $9 billion 5G fund for rural America.” Pai’s press release referred generally to carriers overstating coverage, but it did not name any of the specific carriers that did so.

Pai’s office also held a press call with reporters in which FCC officials focused almost entirely on the new 5G fund rather than the carriers’ inaccurate filings.

We also understand it’s likely that the FCC’s test methodology played a part. Carrier claims are based on outdoor use, while the tests were inside vehicles, which will have a measurable impact on signal strength.

Unless the FCC acts to ensure more accurate models or measurements in the future, we’re likely to see similar exaggerations in claimed 5G coverage. We’ve already seen carriers making big claims based on tiny coverage zones.

Better LTE radio chips and antennas can see phones achieve faster LTE downloads, and the iPhone 11 line-up achieves notably faster speeds than previous models.

Photo: Shutterstock