That's an interesting observation. I wonder if that 99.6% figure is a mistake or if they use a different coverage definition for wireless, because the numbers don't add up.
Looking at the map, the northernmost county has barely any HSPA coverage. Nevertheless that county has a population of a quarter of a million inhabitants. To get 99.6% coverage, you'd still have to cover over 200 000 of those and everybody else in the country. That's clearly impossible as 100 000 inhabitants in that county live outside the ten largest "metro" areas.
There's just no way of not covering a lot of roads if if you aim for coverage in the high nineties with such a dispersed population.
Is this just a guess or do you have anything to back this up with?
> You could probably cover 98.5% of the population without covering much of the road network.
Here's a map of xDSL coverage: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/20110...
Let's see how you propose to cover that land area without also covering much of the road network.