Report from Israel on coverage

Coverage on Orange (900 Mhz) coverage pretty much everywhere even in remote areas full bars.

Coverage with Cellcom (1800 Mhz) coverage pretty much everywhere though I did find one spot in a remote area where there was one spot that I had no coverage but changing my position by just a few metres I had full coverage once again. I think this shows that even though a 900 carrier has usually better coverage that if a network is populated with enough base stations that it doesn't matter all that much.

I noticed in my travels that there appear to be base stations pretty much all over the countryside and also appear to have many antennas in the cities as well.

 

I pretty much know this. You really do have to take into consideration what kind of country you're dealing with in both cases. Israel even though the whole country isn't living everywhere in the country is a very small compact country so it's not that difficult to build systems that will cover the country well. That and the fact that you don't have as much "NIMBYism" over here as you do in many parts of the US. With the US (or Canada for that matter) as spread out as it is coverage for the entire country is probably something that's never going to happen. It's just not practical for carriers to build out in areas where absolutely nobody lives... and there are great swaths of land where this is so in the US. Verizon and their partner companies does a great job but even they don't cover everything everywhere.

It's likely that way in other large countries. Look at coverage maps for Australia, Russia or China as examples.

Europe is an example (for the most part) of ubiquitous coverage and that's because of the density of population.