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Question regarding cell towers

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

I have downloaded the network cell info app and notice that my phone does not seem to use the Telus tower that is closest to me. Its actually on the next property to me. The phone seems to lock on to a cell tower across the harbor instead of the closest one. Why would that be? Am I in the RF shadow as am underneath the hill its on?. Are not all Telus tower compatible with PM? Just wondering why?

 

Thanks!

 

 

44 REPLIES 44

AppleGenius
Great Neighbour / Super Voisin

Volte = Voice Over LTE

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Well finally figured out what was happening. In fact I was periodically connecting to the tower closets to me. I think the hill was blocking the signal. One app showed the location of the tower way out in left field... So that didn't help. I was not looking at the cell site id as well to make sure I was indeed connected to the site I wanted. When I went up to the site, it connected. So line of sight was key for me. 

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

I made a call to voicemail and noticed in the app that it changes cell towers to a HSPA connection. When call ended it went back to LTE connection on another cell tower. Starting to understand how this works. Still connects to towers away from me. Oh well. May be too close for the one up the hill from me. Will do more tests soon. 

Thanks everyone. 

 

 

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Would be neat if pm allowed it one day to keep up with the changing tech. Oh well happy so far with pm! People spend way to much on cell phone plans! I sure got loved by my last carrier! 100 Canada mins 500mb data unlimited text..... For $58 a month!!!!!!! How did I not change sooner! 

@ccdevmike 

VoLTE = Voice over LTE

Kind of like:

VoIP = Voice over IP

 

VoLTE is really VoIPoLTE 🙂 since LTE is technically all data packets - voice packets just get a higher priority,

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Sorry disregard! Google is your friend.....?????

VOLTE Voice over LTE. Sounds interesting!

mm80
Town Hero / Héro de la Ville

@ccdevmike wrote:

Sorry I never heard the answer as to what volte is?

 

 


phone calls using the LTE network

 

Public Mobile doesn't have that.

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

Sorry I never heard the answer as to what volte is?

 

 

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@Nezgar perhaps? I should try the same app on my wife's phone who is on Telus and see if she connects to it! It's an iPhone. 

Sorry this is going on and on but I guess we are all learning something 😀

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@computergeek541 this is what I'm thinking. I'll go up there again and check my app. What cell network analysis app do you like? I like cellmapper and network cell info so far. 

@ccdevmike 

Maybe it serves a newer LTE or 5G band that your phones in question do not support.


@ccdevmike wrote:

@Nezgar I know phisically where this Telus tower is as it's on the property next to me and can walk right up to it. I'll have to do some tests while walking around it to see why I don't connect to it. Even my old s5 neo which does not has a sim card installed does not connect to it... Mind you it does not support 4g. But still If it had 3g also, it should connect......


If it's that close, it likely doesn't serve your property. Especially with an antenna being high up, it may very well skip right over you and that means that's your out of range, as strange as that might sound.

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@Nezgar I know phisically where this Telus tower is as it's on the property next to me and can walk right up to it. I'll have to do some tests while walking around it to see why I don't connect to it. Even my old s5 neo which does not has a sim card installed does not connect to it... Mind you it does not support 4g. But still If it had 3g also, it should connect......


@Nezgar wrote:

@ccdevmike wrote:

https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=302&MNC=220&type=LTE&latitude=49.018619014013126&longitude=-123.8...

 

this is the tower Im wondering why Im not connecting to.


cellmapper.net tower locations are not accurate. They are estimated/extrapolated/triangulated based on observations uploaded from people running their android app while they travel around. The tower you are referencing may just have been a stray one time observation of that particular channel/carrier. The tower may actually be somewhere compeltely different. The ertyu map uses actual tower data from a public CRTC database.


Cellmapper.net site locations can be several kilometers off. For some networks, the app developer has replaced the crowd sourced calculated locations with confirmed cell site locations.


@sheytoon wrote:

@ccdevmike send me the tower locations and I can check the bands. These days pretty much every site has 3G and 4G.

 

I would say the solution you selected is incorrect.

 

@computergeek541 antennas are usually directional, not omni. This means there is a certain beam pattern / beamwidth with the highest gain. Outside of the main lobe of an antenna, signal strength will be lower than inside.

 

Also, I don't agree with your statement that signal quality doesn't matter. Higher SNR results in higher modulation, less errors, less call drops, less handover failures and more network capacity.


@ccdevmike @gpixel @sheytoon 

I agree with Sheytoon. The chosen solution is not likely to be the cause of all this and I've left the solution vacant. First, while in standby, or any time that the phone isn't in a phone call, it's going to prefer the LTE network if the network conditions are acceptable. That means that any such tower ID app is going to be far more likely to report that the user is connected to an LTE network  So, the phone isn't going to give preference to a further away HSPA tower.  The likelihood of there being an LTE-only site there is also low. From my understanding, the LTE-only sites are usually in places that never had cell phone coverage up until recently.

 

Sheyton:

I could swear by it that the defunct Mobilicity network was extremely omni-directional. There was something about it that struck me how the coverage seem to go further in any direction, but the signal readings were usually lower than Wind whose network often gave better readings, but those better readings were in less places. That became obvious, at least to me, because of how in my area, Wind and Mobilicity both had antennae on top of the same building.

 

Perhaps, I shouldn't have said that signal readings don't matter. Everything matters to a relative extent. All I mean is how a less than an ideal connection can still give a perfectly useable voice connection and work to the extent that there's no difference in voice quality, should the quality of signal not fall below a certain threshhold. I do not believe that voice uses all that much bandwidth under normal circumstances. Also, when it comes to a weaker signal reading, it's also possible that the phone could be hanging on to HSPA band 2 instead of switching over to band 5, the latter which would likely give a better reading.


@ccdevmike wrote:

https://www.cellmapper.net/map?MCC=302&MNC=220&type=LTE&latitude=49.018619014013126&longitude=-123.8...

 

this is the tower Im wondering why Im not connecting to.


cellmapper.net tower locations are not accurate. They are estimated/extrapolated/triangulated based on observations uploaded from people running their android app while they travel around. The tower you are referencing may just have been a stray one time observation of that particular channel/carrier. The tower may actually be somewhere compeltely different. The ertyu map uses actual tower data from a public CRTC database.

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@sheytoon I'll send the cells my phone is connecting to and the one I'd like to connect to. I think it may only have 4g? Or I'm in the RF shadow at the base of the hill....

@Anonymous 

I'm aware of the azimuth and the basic direction they point.... @sheytoon gave me a mini tutorial one day (the farm) so i could have a basic understanding on how to read the info in the map.Hes an excellent teacher for a non techie.

@ccdevmike send me the tower locations and I can check the bands. These days pretty much every site has 3G and 4G.

 

I would say the solution you selected is incorrect.

 

@computergeek541 antennas are usually directional, not omni. This means there is a certain beam pattern / beamwidth with the highest gain. Outside of the main lobe of an antenna, signal strength will be lower than inside.

 

Also, I don't agree with your statement that signal quality doesn't matter. Higher SNR results in higher modulation, less errors, less call drops, less handover failures and more network capacity.

Anonymous
Not applicable

 @darlicious 

Cellmapper is also useful to see the beams. Click on a tower dot and you can get an idea of it's directionality. sheytoon might have an opinion of this site though 🙂 as I certainly don't know. I think it looks pretty cool.

@ccdevmike 

I have a friend with a farm on the island near chemanius. Once on the farm ( its about 100 acres) my pm/telus signal is terrible. Often with no signal at all but there's a sweet spot on the far corner of the deck  but that's it. However the rogers signal is fantastic pretty much everywhere. After looking at the cell tower map it didn't make sense to me as there were so many more telus towers than rogers and closer as well! @sheytoon helped me understand the azimuth directional signals and the importance of height compared to topography ....

Screenshot_20200916-130511~2.png

But by reading the approximate direction of the rogers tower and more importantly its height it made sense that the rogers signal was able to make it over the surrounding mountains while the telus signal could only squeak over the southerly dip between the mountains on either side and reach the height of the deck and a narrow line of higher elevation behind the house.IMG_20171009_120506871_HDR.jpg

There are many factors that go into an optimized signal that your phone connects to for service.

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@computergeek541 those are the ones across the harbour to me then. According to map and apps.

 

Thanks!


@ccdevmike wrote:

 

So just to clarify calls use the 3g cell towers then? 

 

 


Yes, and only those ones.

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@computergeek541 fair enough. Just wanted to open up this subject a bit and learn something. My call quality has been ok. Some cutting in and out but not horrible. Just wondered if it was related to different connections to different cell sites. My average signal seems to be around +100dbm. Translates to about 3 bars I think. 

 

So just to clarify calls use the 3g cell towers then? 

 

 


@ccdevmike wrote:

@gpixel I agree we only need so much speed. I just wanted to connect to my closest tower for better signal and call quality. But seeing as it's 4g, it does not connect to it for voice and texts I guess. 

 


Text messages do work on LTE. 

 

As for wanting your phone connecting to the best possible location, your phone is already doing that. The phone's software will decide that for you. As for call "quality", these are digital signals. There will be no difference in quality whether the signal is weak or strong, as long as the signal is consistent and doesn't cut out during a call. I wouldn't worry about where your phone is connecting to, as long as the service works.


@ccdevmike wrote:

@geopublic I'll try setting to LTE only. I think it is already but will double check.

Thanks 


Please do not do this. If you do, phone calls won't work.


@ccdevmike wrote:

I wonder if PM will move us over to 4G in the future? Price would have to go up I would guess???


Public Mobile is already using LTE, but only for calls and text messaging, as well as HSPA.


@gpixel wrote:

@ccdevmike I think the reason is because that tower that's closer to you is an LTE tower and public mobile needs HSPA (3g) to use phone calls and text

 

*pm uses LTE but only for data. if making phone calls/sms it will use hspa

 

hopefully we get that "volte" soon. since Telus is reducing our coverage...


This wouldn't be the reason unless the phone has LTE disabled (or doesn't have it) or if the person is in a phone call. A phone call set to LTE as the preferred network type would automatically connect to LTE regardless and only switch over if the LTE signal was very weak or unless the customer was in a phone call.

 

This means that while in standy, the phone would be connected to the possibly LTE-only tower (if that's the one that is reportedly nearby) if those above conditions are true.

 

Also, LTE at Public Mobile isn't only used for data. It is also used for SMS.


@ccdevmike wrote:

Also, do 4G cell sites not have 3G connectivity also? Sorry don't know how this works.

 

 

 


Yes. Almost all do.

ccdevmike
Great Citizen / Super Citoyen

@gpixel I agree we only need so much speed. I just wanted to connect to my closest tower for better signal and call quality. But seeing as it's 4g, it does not connect to it for voice and texts I guess. 

What is volte?

 

This has been a good learning experience for sure! 

 

Thanks all. 

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