T-Mobile claims it didn’t lie about 4G coverage, says FCC measured wrong

T-Mobile says the Federal Communications Commission screwed up 4G measurements in a report that accused the carrier of exaggerating its mobile coverage. The FCC report "incorrectly implies, based on a flawed verification process, that we overstated coverage," T-Mobile said in an FCC filing Feb 17. The FCC staff report, issued in Dec 2019, found that Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular exaggerated their 4G coverage in official filings. As the FCC said, "Overstating mobile broadband coverage misleads the public and can misallocate our limited universal service funds."

The dispute over whether T-Mobile exaggerated its coverage won't affect any punishment because the FCC already said it wouldn't punish the carriers in any way, even though making false filings violates federal law. The FCC said that its investigation "did not find a sufficiently clear violation" of data-collection requirements to warrant any penalties. However, figuring out who's right in this dispute could affect the distribution of government funds and whether the FCC or T-Mobile need to make changes to their measurement processes. T-Mobile says that "when the FCC collected speed-test data to evaluate T-Mobile's maps, it failed to follow commonly accepted coverage testing procedures as well as its own MF-II [Mobility Fund Phase II] instructions."