Signal Strength

[Chuckcell]

Staying at a resort last night. I saw signal strength (same location over a 3 hour period) go from 4G lte to 2G to G to E. What's with that? I would expect to see one strength level or off.

 

[SpookDroid]

Well, it depends. Some carriers will switch you over to Edge or 3G if you're not 'heavily' using the network and kick 4G in when you are, but the most usual cause for this is Network clutter. Too many users can cause your network to go from 4G to Edge and everything in between in a few seconds and, actually, a few times.

If you want to make sure that your phone is not to blame, you'd need to have another phone in the same network stand next to you and see if that one has the same network type/signal strength as you.

 

[Rukbat]

There are a lot of other things that can cause that. Airplane flutter is one. The signal reflected by a plane flying overhead (even at 20,000 feet or so) keeps changing phase, so it keeps reinforcing/interfering with the signal from the tower, making the signal "flutter". That will switch you all over the place in a second or two.

A 55 foot trailer passing near you can cause the same effect. If you're near an interstate, with a lot of truck traffic, you can also get flutter.

And atmospherics can cause the same effect. (If there's a mass coronal ejection on the sun, we can lose all communications for hours [and get some fantastic auroras visible as far south as the southern US]. Smaller ejections can cause all sorts of problems intermittently.)

There are a lot of things we can control, but the laws of physics aren't one of them.