Long way from the cell tower?
- Thread starter Chris142
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It’s amazing how terrible the cell service is in the US. I get 1 bar inside my house in a large metro area. When I was at a cabin in the middle of BFE Iceland, I was getting 4 bars. You would think after a quarter of century of the modern cell phones, these phone companies would have 4 bar service everywhere in this country.
You'd have thought that the old school satellite phones would be dirt cheap and have inexpensive calling plans by now.
I'm in central MA, about 8 miles outside of Worcester by how the crow flies, and I'm in 1 bar and sometimes no bar land. If I drive 1/8 of a mile down the road it's 3 or 4 bars. If I look at a coverage map there is a bubble over my house and a couple of neighbors that are absent 5G or 4G - it's actually kind of comical. I think most of the calls end up going through Wifi.
You have to remember the very high cost of a tower, FCC licensing and costs, maintenance, and technology upgrades. Pair that with a chunk of the USA with very low population density and here we are. Yeah I get it. I thought 5g was supposed to add bandwidth and additional channels.
Most people ditched land lines years ago. Besides he was disussing cell phones not landlines.....
Naw pretty sure he meant an old rotary dial phone hanging on the kitchen wall with a 50' cord - that is landline
I have noticed (as has friends of mine) the cell service has gotten extremely spotty the last year or two. My personal opinion is that it is due to the 5G tower "upgrades" where the deactivated many older towers. 4G has more range than 5G but 5G has better bandwidth. The end result for me is where I used to have 3-4 bars of service I know only get 1-2 around the house. In addition there are now 4 dead spots I never had before when making my normal drives. I think there are less 5G towers now then when they were 4G --but they also have to still handle the additional traffic and they can't.
Nope, I have a 2 line RCA cordless system with a base station in an upstairs bedroom and seven handsets throughout the house. Phone is included with my Verizon Fios bundle and the second line ads just $10 to the bill. Have the first number since 1970 when parents moved to this area. Cellphone clarity sucks compared to landlines.Naw pretty sure he meant an old rotary dial phone hanging on the kitchen wall with a 50' cord - that is landline
Understood. I hear that is a good service but not available yet in my remote area.
burbguy82
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CEL-FI GO X G32
The Cel-Fi GO X is an in-building signal booster system that utilizes Nextivity’s Cel-Fi Smart Signal Booster technology to significantly boost voice and data coverage.
www.waveform.com
I have this, and is solves the issue 100%. Without it, sometimes 1 bar 4g, with it, 4-5 bar 5g.
@Chris142
Crazy question.
Will any of these continue boosting when power goes out?
Our service is bad.
When power goes out and we lose WiFi we can barely text.
Will any of these continue boosting when power goes out?
Our service is bad.
When power goes out and we lose WiFi we can barely text.
The lack of population density works well with Chris' desert landscaping though. They don't make cells too big, covering too many people. Otherwise the "lines" would be jammed. So in the cities they have lower towers with lower power so they can cover a stated number of phones. In the sticks they make taller towers with more power and more space between them. There are only so many frequencies and allocating those resources is an art.
Yes, were like this. I am supposedly 3 miles from the tower, albeit lots of trees. In front of my house I get like 2 bars. If I drive UP the hill towards the tower it actually goes away completely.
When I reach the top of the hill I drive towards the tower another 1/4 mile and bam - 4 bars. Its like there is a bubble that extends even at the top of the hill. Weird.
"Cell tower locator" lol
That's right. What distance most people are from their towers is really more about how they tune the cell size. It could be huge like an entire city, or it could be very small like half a city block. The way towers do this is by turning the power UP or DOWN and notify your phone how much power to use to send to the tower.
The whole reason cell phone got cheap (and they are called cell phone) is by reducing the power and make the cell smaller, and reuse these frequencies multiple times as long as they are not interfering with each other. Typically you have a hexagon like layout and you cannot reuse the same frequency in the adjacent cell, but you can in the next next cell.
I don't think retiring 3G they just abandon those bands, they reuse them for LTE and for the nearby traffic probably switch them to higher frequency bands in 5G that doesn't travel as far. What might have happened is they sign up too many new customers and congestion get them.
Feels like 5G is a solution for a non-existent problem. Maybe a money saver long term if your thoughts are correct.
The main purpose of the carriers pushing 5G is to increase data usage across the board. The real money in cell service is in data consumption; hence the proliferation of "unlimited" talk minutes and texts from the 3 major carriers. Of course, the MVNOs have to pay Verizon/T-Mobile/AT&T for ALL bandwidth usage; therefore, MVNOs are more stingy with talk minutes & texts on their basic plans.
Well, if you are on 700MHz and you have no obstructions, 20 miles may be doable, 30 is a very low RSRP stretch. Chris's RSRP of -116 means his phone is gasping for breath and virtually disconnected, his phone is likely on a higher frequency than 700MHz. We also can't tell how utilization there is on the band or which band he's on. Mostly 9 miles in the cellular world is a long ways away and will gain you poor performance. On the other hand, you can be standing right next to a highly congested radio (tower) and get zero throughput, I've seen that many times at large venues. When I look at the stats for that radio later, I can see that the overall throughput is very high and the individual throughput to each device is in the 2400 baud speed, which in this day you'd might as well have no connection.
