Does altitude affect LTE?

[sigma_wrx]

I'm on Sprint and I was in a hotel in E Rutherford, NJ. I get 4G ON the 18th floor in the room even in the elevator but when I came down, it went back to 3g.

 

[Scott Kenyon]

I have a feeling this has more to do with building penetration than it does with altitude. Most towers are omnidirectional, thus the signal would be equally distributed in all planes. Since most towers are higher than most buildings (perhaps not the one you're in) the signal would pass through more building materials on the first floor than the 18th. I'm no expert on this, it's just a guess based on what I do understand about how these things work. In any event, the thing Sprint and others should (and in other cases ARE) doing is deploy microcells throughout metro areas. They're like little cell phone towers that work on a much more local level. This would improve signal in a near area.

 

[Farish]

Could be that the top of the roof had a Cell Tower on it, as you get closer to the top the better and faster the signal got.

 

[Raptor]

Could also be that there are fewer obstructions the higher you go so there's less to reduce the signal.


Brian

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk 2

 

[sigma_wrx]

Idk I was just surprised. I know there's only little bits of 4g in nj but I got it on the 18th floor but not outside the hotel. Thanks for the theories.