CPUC's New Way of Measuring Mobile Performance Shrinks Providers' Coverage on Tribal Lands from 80 percent to 20 percent

While previously the CPUC relied on mobile providers' coverage claims, which resulted in 80% of California's native population having served mobile broadband coverage, the new method based on our mobile speed testing program minus one standard deviation, to account for mobile broadband's inherent unreliability, now shows only 23 percent of the population covered by 6 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up. These results raise questions about whether tribes, who do not have wireline broadband service, can use mobile broadband as a substitute.