Poor LTE service in Haliburton Highlands (Hwy35/118)

[MK78]

Let me preface, I realize this isn't directly a Public Mobile issue, but I want to get some answers from the community.

I have a cottage near Carnarvon, which is in Haliburton Highlands, near Hwy 35/118. I had been with Rogers for many many years prior to switching to PM back in November. I never had issues with service there ever since they deployed LTE.

My issues are just very poor speeds, i have ok signal (3 dots on my iPhone 6s) but speeds outside on LTE are like 3-4meg, and inside the house its barely 1-2meg, not good enough to stream any sort of video. Sometimes indoors it switches to 3G in which case the speeds are like dialup 56k.

Now, I was looking at the Canadian Cell Tower Map, and the immediate area I'm in is served by 3 Bell towers (which Telus shares with Bell, and so does Koodo/PM). I am only seeing 700mhz and 850mhz frequencies in all the 3 surrounding towers, and this is I think where the problem lies, Bell/Telus have not deployed higher frequencies in the area, and they either don't have good enough capacity to feed those towers or they're just too congested to provide decent service. Checking Rogers towers in the area, most have many more frequencies available.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

I assume 700MHz is LTE, and 850MHz is 3G (UMTS).

[MK78]

Thanks. PM sent.

Yeah, i figured Bell just has less bandwidth there... Sucks. I think according to the canadian tower map site, Rogers has a stronger transmitter in wattage 60W for LTE, while Bell only 20W.

I wonder if there's hope of any upgrades in the area...

[sheytoon · Accepted solution]

@MK78

Where is your cottage? You can private message me a more precise location if you don't want to post details here. You might be outside of the two antenna beams of the Bell signal, but in the centre of Rogers signal. Bell doesn't cover well to the north or east of that site.

In general your comments are accurate. Bell's LTE channels are 5 MHz, while Rogers has 5 MHz as well as 15 MHz of B4.

[NDesai]

Tagging the expert @sheytoon to shed some light on this.