4G won’t solve our coverage problems

Definitions

Coverage is the percentage of a given geography where you receive a reliable signal.

Coverage is not bandwidth. When you have a connection, 4G will have more bandwidth than 3g and thus be faster.

Coverage is not latency. When you have a connection, latency is the overhead in making a connection and starting to receive data. 4G latency should be much better than 3G latency.

Why doesn’t 4G solve coverage problems?

There  is a finite amount of spectrum available to wireless companies and each cell tower can only support a fixed number of concurrent connections. At the same time, the average people is using more bandwidth every day and more people are coming online to use high speed wireless.

The net effect: A larger number of people will be competing more often for a fixed resource. So your ability to get and keep a connection will be just as terrible. Your coverage will still suck.