The German telecoms regulator has been one of the most ambitious in imposing coverage obligations on operators when they have won spectrum in the most valuable 4G and 5G bands, generally those below 1 GHz. That led Deutsche Telekom to build out rural 4G as early as it started urban deployment, and all the MNOs, to some extent, kicked off rural 5G in the same timeframe as city networks – a very atypical pattern in Europe, where most operators have been free to target the most lucrative user bases, in urban centers, first. However, it remains challenging to provide good broadband 4G and 5G coverage in a large and varied geography such as Germany’s, and back in 2019, before the…