When Your Carrier Sells You Coverage It Can't Deliver

My Weird Prompts · Sep 24, 2026 · 24m

A listener swapped to a cheaper carrier and lost his data connection almost entirely — same phone, same bands, central Jerusalem. This episode unpacks the four technical layers behind "works now and again and mostly doesn't," from thin cell density and spectrum band physics to oversubscription and failed handovers. Then we get into the marketing question: what does a 5G claim actually mean, and how are coverage maps built from carrier claims rather than measurements? Along the way we look at why crowdsourced network data isn't a hobbyist pursuit but consumer protection, and what regulators…