Even in 2G you have special cells that allocate two+ adjacent time-slots for a channel and so can effectively double the max range at the cost of serving less c

Even in 2G you have special cells that allocate two+ adjacent time-slots for a channel and so can effectively double the max range at the cost of serving less concurrent clients. This is used in sparsely populated regions (think remote highways etc). It's not a physical, the-signal-can't-reach issue.