  Understanding and improving mobile broadband deployment is critical to
bridging the digital divide and targeting future investments. Yet accurately
mapping mobile coverage is challenging. In 2019, the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) released a report on the progress of mobile broadband
deployment in the United States. This report received a significant amount of
criticism with claims that the cellular coverage, mainly available through
Long-Term Evolution (LTE), was over-reported in some areas, especially those
that are rural and/or tribal [12]. We evaluate the validity of this criticism
using a quantitative analysis of both the dataset from which the FCC based its
report and a crowdsourced LTE coverage dataset. Our analysis is focused on the
state of New Mexico, a region characterized by diverse mix of
demographics-geography and poor broadband access. We then performed a
controlled measurement campaign in northern New Mexico during May 2019. Our
findings reveal significant disagreement between the crowdsourced dataset and
the FCC dataset regarding the presence of LTE coverage in rural and tribal
census blocks, with the FCC dataset reporting higher coverage than the
crowdsourced dataset. Interestingly, both the FCC and the crowdsourced data
report higher coverage compared to our on-the-ground measurements. Based on
these findings, we discuss our recommendations for improved LTE coverage
measurements, whose importance has only increased in the COVID-19 era of
performing work and school from home, especially in rural and tribal areas.
