Are there that many people or places though? Even from my small hometown with a population of 300 tucked away in the mountains, there's 5g cell service from the major providers.

I'm certain places like that exist, but I'm guessing it's far less than most would imagine.

My bet is a non-insignificant amount of sirus's money today comes from their model of making subscriptions really annoying to cancel. And, of course, preying on old people that may have forgot about their subscription or don't get streaming.

I didn't realize how sparse coverage was in the West until I moved out here. Once you're 5 minutes off of an interstate outside of a metro area it's pretty common still to have no signal.

Verizon and AT&T do pretty well as long as you stick to highways, though there will still be a few dead zones even on the interstates. T-Mobile is hopeless once you are 5 miles outside the suburbs of any city. My wife has T-Mobile for her work phone and there are a few dead zones in our suburb of 100,000 people.

Oh wow, didn't know there was still such a difference, I've only ever had TMobile and Mint.

I wonder if it's worth waiting for T-Mobile's satellite features, or if I should move to Verizon?

There is a very large number of areas in Colorado that don't have coverage.

Absolutely.

Driving up from the SF Bay to Tahoe, you'll lose cell service as you pass through the mountains - especially if you take the Highway 50 route. Drive up to Oregon, and you'll lose cell service for a long stretch roughly near Klamath Falls. (As an aside, that part of the country doesn't even have NEXRAD weather radar.)

And this is all while on the freeway or major highways. There's plenty of places out west without a reliable cell signal, or sometimes a signal that's so weak that it's not usable for data.

Where I live in New Mexico has consistently poor reception withing about 60 miles. My Spotify is almost always in offline mode since it chokes on poor signal. Radio and TV have repeaters on a nearby mountain that rebroadcast a few stations. Meanwhile Sirius works everywhere except in my garage.

For me it mostly replaces my CD changer, which doesn't exist in newer cars. When I can't decide what to listen to, have poor signal, or don't want to fiddle with the controls, it gives me a nice selection on fallbacks.

Your cell service is likely subsidized by some grant so it’s biasing your mental model or it’s a popular tourist destination.