[spacemanspiff01]

In addition to what others have said, Often from a network perspective you want smaller range.

At the end of the day, there is a total speed limit of Mb/s/Hz.

For example, in cities, with a high population density, you could theoretically have a single cell tower providing data for everyone.

However, the speed would be slow, as for a given bandwidth six the data is shared between everyone in the city.

Alternatively, one could have 100 towers, and then the data would only have to be shared by those within range. But for this to work, one of the design constraints is that a smaller range is beneficial, so that multiple towers do not interfere with each other.