4G LTE & 5G Coverage In Santa Barbara

The table below shows the proportion of Santa Barbara with coverage from different cellular technologies.

Network	4G Coverage	5G Coverage
AT&T	100%	80%
T-Mobile	98%	76%
Verizon	100%	92%
Dish	0%	40%

Don't be alarmed by Dish's lack of 4G coverage in Santa Barbara. Dish has a newly-built network that's 5G-only.

US Cellular And Dish Roaming Coverage

US Cellular does not have native coverage in Santa Barbara. However, some US Cellular subscribers may still have coverage in Santa Barbara thanks to roaming agreements.

The 40% figure for Dish may understate what subscribers in Santa Barbara experience after accounting for roaming agreements.

Santa Barbara Cell Signal Strength

There are 440 map hexes within the census-defined boundaries of Santa Barbara. The table below shows the proportion of hexes at various levels of signal strength. Where both 4G and 5G coverage is available, data is drawn from whichever technology offers a stronger signal.

Network	Strong	Decent	Weak	None
AT&T	34%	63%	3%	0%
T-Mobile	13%	60%	25%	2%
Verizon	51%	44%	5%	0%
Dish	0%	29%	12%	60%

For most purposes, decent signals are perfectly sufficient. Weak or non-existent signals cause far greater degradation in user experience.

Crowdsourced Coverage Data In Santa Barbara

Coverage Critic has 11,368 crowdsourced data points from 197 map hexes within the boundaries of Santa Barbara. Data is available for AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

Network	Unique Hexes	Total Observations
AT&T	162	6,113
T-Mobile	171	4,318
Verizon	94	900

Click here to toggle to the map's crowdsourced data layer.

California State-Wide Coverage Scores

Network	Coverage Score
Verizon	8.8 / 10
AT&T	8.6 / 10
T-Mobile	8.2 / 10

Data Sourcing

Coverage maps draw on data from the FCC's Broadband Data Collection and Coverage Critic's crowdsourcing.

The coverage information for Santa Barbara is rated as medium-high confidence. Documentation is available elsewhere covering limitations of Coverage Critic's approach.