I haven't been to Huntington to try it out. I was near it a couple weekends ago but the wife wasn't having it about going to Huntington so I could try the 4G. lol
I did see the post about it being in the Teays Valley/Hurricane area. I was in the area but forgot all about it. I just looked at Clear's app and I was in a 4G section. So I missed out to see how well it was. I'll be there again probably soon as my aunt is always having a cookout.
When I go to the wife's work I think there is a tower (I could be wrong but it does look like the ones I seen pics of) on an office building but it is only 4 stories. Its near the river and the interstate goes right past it. The interstate is the same height of the building through the downtown area of Charleston. So when I go on the other side of the interstate across from that building it drops to one bar.
So could that be the tower isn't very strong or because of the frequency being high (that you talked about in another thread) can't get past all that concrete?
Sounds like you try to victimize your wife in a similar fashion that I do!
2.5Ghz signal cannot penetrate concrete at all. However, if they are approximately the same height, part of the signal is skimming across the top of the concrete barriers on that freeway.
If that is the Charleston tower, what you would likely observe in this condition is...
If you were in the lane closest to the tower you would probably get full bars because you would be close enough to the edge to get a line of sight to the tower. But if you were on the opposite side of the freeway in the farthest lane away, you would either get one bar or zero bars. This would be because in the plane between you and the tower would involve going through concrete. The concrete would block a direct connection to the signal. But being that close to the tower, you would likely get just enough signal refraction to get a limited signal. Usable, but probably speed challenged.
If you get a good signal on the opposite side of the freeway, most likely that is not the Clear tower. The Clear tower would have to be in a higher location.
2.5Ghz will penetrate wood structure buildings and foliage decently up to 1 mile, but this ability drops offs significantly after 1 mile. Concrete is a no go for 2.5 Ghz. Even 700-900mhz will not penetrate concrete, but the signal bounces and refracts much better giving some shadow coverages. 2.5Ghz does not bounce/refract at all unless you are pretty darn close to the signal. And where it does it, it does not do it well. Largely because the transmitter on your device transmitting back to the tower is much weaker and the tower will not receive the refracted signal back.
In places with dense foliage, the transmitter needs to be higher to get more coverage. Dense foliage can really impact a 2.5Ghz signal when mounted low and is trying to broadcast through trees instead of over them.
2.5Ghz can be a real challenge for large area deployment. Can create lots of shadow pockets with little to no coverage. However, 2.5Ghz is great at high quality signals for data. But because of it's limitations, it's better for urban areas.
An ideal world is a dual band Wi-Max (or LTE for that matter) broadcasted at 2.5Ghz and 800mhz. This way you can get far out coverage from the tower and high quality dense channelization near the tower. But that kind of spectrum holding is big bucks!!! Maybe Sprint will do that with the Nextel iDEN network?
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