It’s been a long time, but my recollection was that it varied widely by region. Where I lived, alot of the territory between cities was controlled by regional/

It’s been a long time, but my recollection was that it varied widely by region. Where I lived, alot of the territory between cities was controlled by regional/local companies like Cellular One, and those companies basically leveraged control of territory to extract whatever they could from the carriers. You had 3G in town, but drove a few minutes away and there you got handed off to the little guy, usually using EDGE. Iirc, Verizon and AT&T acquired most of them circa 2007. I think you’re right in that 3G is not responsible for the iPhones’ success, but I would say that iPhone is responsible for the success of 3G and the growth that accelerated LTE.