I would find this tag useful to tag spots along a rural highway with patchy cell service.
However: the word “cell” is a US-centric word. Much of the world uses the word “mobile”.
Perhaps prefix with “mobile” instead of “cell”?
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Good point. Thanks for the context, I’ll update that
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I added the tag mobile_reception=yes to this node. It’s a remote Utah mountain highway with no mobile service along most of its length, but there are spots where reception is available due to the vagaries of geography. There are informal parking lots where people pull off and park so they can catch up with messages! This is very useful and could even result in life saving information becoming available about storms, forest fires, road closures, etc.
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@kevinp2 I would suggest adding this to the existing POIs out there. I noticed a nearby parking POI ( Node: 11173156955) you had created as well as a nearby campground. These could both benefit greatly from the tagging
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This is a good idea. I used a WiFi hotspot node because I use OSMAnd on my phone and it renders the node with a WiFi icon and I can see it and route to it.
I will add the tag to nearby POIs that have the reception (which can change dramatically within a hundred yards)
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@kevinp2 I would suggest adding this to the existing POIs out there. I noticed a nearby parking POI ( Node: 11173156955) you had created as well as a nearby campground. These could both benefit greatly from the tagging
if you can get cellphone reception on a part of the campsite and another part not, should we split the campsite?
Sure, just like you’d split a campground if it offers barbecue pits and sanitary dump stations only on one side but not evenly distributed throughout the grounds. 
As long as cell reception isn’t a top-level feature tag, it seems fine to interpret it as an “available somewhere in here” attribute.
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Though it makes a huge difference, whether I can enjoy the WiFi in my tent or need to go to the main building 
@kevinp2 A word of caution from your recent edits. Stating here for others benefits as well.
It seems you’re also tagging internet_access=wlan, which is against the mobile_reception proposal. wlan is specifically for local Wi-Fi provided via a router/wireless access point, such as coffee shops or possibly provided at the campground. This isn’t for general wireless internet such as mobile phones or satellite internet.
I would also suggest adding the mobile_access:strength tags as detailed in the proposal and it seems mobile_reception=limited may be more appropriate for this area due to the limited availability / low strength.
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A WiFi hotspot is something different than a point where you have mobile internet. You should tag things according what they are, not according to how things appear on a map.
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In some countries, cell tower locations are a matter of public record,
and not a government protected secret. (Tower antenna licenses registered with the communications commission but not public.)
Thus only the need to map one point, instead of hundreds of points with strengths but then no direction information.
Just like saying oh it’s about 1,000 m to the next gas station, but not knowing which way to turn. And doing the same all the way down the street for each house.
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In some countries, we have these things called “mountains”. Simply knowing you’re a thousand meters from the cell tower tells you nothing about the presence or absence of coverage. Here’s a cell company’s best effort, overlaid on a topo map. Note that each pixel is about a hundred meters on a side.
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I don’t see how this get you anywhere close to reality. Even considering the area is totally flat and there are perfect environment conditions for transmitting the signal and no other signals around. Still there is not only ONE frequency. Some towers might send longer waves (=higher range, less capacity), some towers sending shorter waves. Even knowing this, still I as a receiver need a device capable of understanding the frequency and better to have a contract with that provider. Even knowing all this, each cell has a max. amount of users it can handle. So say the cap is 1000 simultaneous users, even being 1m away from the tower will give me no signal, as I’m user 1001.
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It’s not only about “mountains” it’s also related to weather, trees, buildings and other obstacles…
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Think of an emergency situation, if there’s any signal available you’ll be routed to any carrier and pushed to the front of line ahead of all other users. Great use case.
Think of trip planning, if you see an area that’s limited /weak signal and that’s an issue for you, great. If you want to find a place where your kids won’t get cell service, great.
Yes there’s limitations. No this will never be perfect, neither will anything in OSM. But “nowhere close to reality” is a stretch, this is valuable and verifiable data.
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I’m sure it is a great proposal. Except in the countries where the exact tower position is easy to add to OSM. Then on an improved OSM.org website, there could be, besides bicycle contour layers, additional cellphone
Viewshed - Wikipedia
layers, (like when one does Viewshed on desktop Google Earth), and voila…
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Just to mention (without any intention of promoting; in fact, I am of the opinion that always-online is horrible lifestyle choice, although it might have valid use in emergency situations) that there are services being deployed like Starlink direct-to-cell which aim to provide mobile services to regular LTE mobile phones anywhere in the open (e.g. middle of a desert or an ocean or top of the mountaints etc) directly from the satellites without using ground-based mobile towers (and without requiring special phone-alike satellite devices)
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Also, OSM is mostly 2D-based, so just because some
lat,lonpair has excellent mobile signal strength at some altitude, does not mean that this samelan,lonpair will have same (or any) signal strength when you e.g. go in the 3rd basement level -
And, signal depends on provider. E.g. if your phone is sold by one carrier, it generally (barring any inter-routing agreements) will not work on other carriers (except emergency calls, e.g. 112 in EU). E.g. at the same location you may have excellent signal on one carrier, while your friend has weak signal (or no signal at all) as they use other mobile carrier. It is in fact quite common outside of urban centers (at least in my part of EU).
So unless your only interest is whether there is a chance one might be able make emergency phone calls (when in need) at some particular spot, you would need to map signal strength separately for each of the carriers operating in that area. Which makes the task of mapping mobile signal strength per-location (as proposed) even more impossible, IMHO.
Still, that being said, mapping mobile phone towers is useful, and can be used as a proxy of what user might expect regarding ground-based mobile signal coverage for emergency situations (or even regular mobile phone usage, if you would find and tag operator too).
But that is likely the best that can be done.
unless you happen to be controlling spyware-loving megacoorporation that sells billions of smartphones used by all the cariiers and collects that data from all of them and you’ve just had a sudden change of heart to shun your profits in order to share that data with community. Hey, it might happen! 
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This would be a good place to start. It should be useful for more than determining cell coverage.
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