Question about towers.

[jimmiekain]

OK, so... Today I noticed a brand new tower being built just a 45 second walk from my house. I went over to it to try to figure out what company it was for. After about 30 mins of Google searching I found out it was for metro pcs. It looks like it's almost done. I'm just curious...

Will T-Mobile phones benefit from this tower at all or only metro pcs?



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[IAmSixNine]

Take a shot of the top of the tower where the antennas are. Home - American Tower Home - American Tower
Most towers in the US are owned by a large company called American Tower. Very few towers are owned by the actual carriers them selves. This is why you see many sets of antennas on 1 tower. If you look up, each horizontal plane will have a triangle shaped spread of antennas.. Usually 6-9 antennas on each horizontal plane, separated by about 10 feet vertically. Each triangle set of antennas is for 1 carrier. If this one has leasing info for metro PCS it probably has legacy CDMA and metro LTE on it. Im not 100% sure if Metro LTE is accessible by TMO phones that are LTE enabled. In theory it can be but not sure the work has been done on the network side to enable it. The CDMA side will never be accessed by a TMO phone. TMO is GSM/LTE or technically GSM/EDGE/HSDPA/HSDPA+/LTE (LTE only if you have an LTE enabled phone.) More then likely this tower will not help you but with out knowing what they are actually implementing inside its hard to say, especially with the two companies now being 1. They might put CDMA on it and LTE thats accessible to both Metro and TMO users.

 

[Golfdriver97]

I think it mainly depends on the contracts carriers have with each other about bandwidth sharing.

 

[jimmiekain]

It's not finished yet but I will take pics of it as soon as I get home and share the here for you all to see. I was hoping that since the two companies are together now maybe new towers will benefit both tmo and metro.

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[IAmSixNine]

I think it mainly depends on the contracts carriers have with each other about bandwidth sharing.

Your thinking of Roaming. If you go outside your home network then you use another carrier.
Also keep in mind that a single site can hold many carriers. But they can often be supplied by 1 or 2 fiber lines from 1 telco. Maybe thats what your referring to by sharing the bandwidth..

 

[jimmiekain]

@iAmSixNine

Here's a bunch of pics I took today.













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[GadgetGator]

I'm amazed at how realtively unprotected all that expensive equipment is. Seems like both people or animals could get at it pretty easy!

 

[IAmSixNine]

Its only expensive to the carriers who buy it.
Someone stealing it and taking it to a pawn shop wont get jack. Since there isnt a black market for stuff like that lazy criminals dont target it.

I also think many criminals dont even know what is inside many of those boxes.

 

[jimmiekain]

This is probably just the placebo effect, but I have noticed that for the past couple days that my signal has been a lot better either full bars or 1 short of full. The data speed have not gotten better at all though. The strange part is that the phone can be sitting there on the table with full bars and then drop to no bars with no interaction whatsoever. Test mode?

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[gollum18]

This is probably just the placebo effect, but I have noticed that for the past couple days that my signal has been a lot better either full bars or 1 short of full. The data speed have not gotten better at all though. The strange part is that the phone can be sitting there on the table with full bars and then drop to no bars with no interaction whatsoever. Test mode?

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Signal bars in android only represent 1x/voice quality not data speed. Try using the speed test app, or go into your settings -> about device and look at your signal. Anything -98dbm> is a decently good signal. The closer the dBm is to zero, the better your signal.

That last part is probably because they are still working on that tower. So therefore you're most likely seeing ghost signals caused by the company testing the tower.

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[jimmiekain]

Signal bars in android only represent 1x/voice quality not data speed. Try using the speed test app, or go into your settings -> about device and look at your signal. Anything -98dbm> is a decently good signal. The closer the dBm is to zero, the better your signal.

That last part is probably because they are still working on that tower. So therefore you're most likely seeing ghost signals caused by the company testing the tower.

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Here is what I'm getting in room where previously I'd get 2 or no bars.



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[IAmSixNine]

That's pretty good I think originally the op mentioned it was a metro pcs tower looks like it's a t-mobile tower instead
Where did the info come from?

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[jimmiekain]

That's pretty good I think originally the op mentioned it was a metro pcs tower looks like it's a t-mobile tower instead
Where did the info come from?

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The site is called antenna search. You can find out who uses the towers in your area.



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[GadgetGator]

Its only expensive to the carriers who buy it.
Someone stealing it and taking it to a pawn shop wont get jack. Since there isnt a black market for stuff like that lazy criminals dont target it.

I also think many criminals dont even know what is inside many of those boxes.

Who said anything about criminals stealing it? i was thinking more in terms of animals or kids getting in there and damaging something. And as it being only expensive to the carriers who buy it, um....you realize that it is ultimately all of us as customers who pays for all this equipment, right?

 

[zorak950]

Who said anything about criminals stealing it? i was thinking more in terms of animals or kids getting in there and damaging something. And as it being only expensive to the carriers who buy it, um....you realize that it is ultimately all of us as customers who pays for all this equipment, right?

So what would you recommend?

 

[metle_geek]

So what would you recommend?

Look up the bands on your phone and look up the bands of metro pcs and the bands it catches will metro and tmo are basically the same company now but idk

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[IAmSixNine]

Who said anything about criminals stealing it? i was thinking more in terms of animals or kids getting in there and damaging something. And as it being only expensive to the carriers who buy it, um....you realize that it is ultimately all of us as customers who pays for all this equipment, right?

Based on the pics this is a double first for me.
My first first is the fact its on a wooden telephone pole. Ive never seen that type of configuration. Usually its a steel mono pole or other type of higher up framing system.
My second first is how small the fence is around it. All the towers ive seen have 8-10 ft chain link fence and most have barbed wire around them. A few of them ive also seen a camera mounted on or around them to watch them.

Im going out on a limb but perhaps this is in a smaller suburb or city with a relatively low crime rate or borderline rural and the need for more security is lower, also the telephone pole configuration will provide less height above ground level and thus less overall coverage. Unless its on top of a hill thats the shortest tower i have seen.

 

[IAmSixNine]

Look up the bands on your phone and look up the bands of metro pcs and the bands it catches will metro and tmo are basically the same company now but idk

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MetroPCS and T-Mobile are merged on paper but as far as the network goes they are still 2 separate network entities.
T-Mobile US - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Its interesting that the licensing came up Metro but yet his TMO phone is benefiting.
Perhaps the new licising for metro is now going to be GSM/HSPA/LTE to be more in line with the plan of doing away with MetoPCS CDMA.

 

[jimmiekain]

Based on the pics this is a double first for me.
My first first is the fact its on a wooden telephone pole. Ive never seen that type of configuration. Usually its a steel mono pole or other type of higher up framing system.
My second first is how small the fence is around it. All the towers ive seen have 8-10 ft chain link fence and most have barbed wire around them. A few of them ive also seen a camera mounted on or around them to watch them.

Im going out on a limb but perhaps this is in a smaller suburb or city with a relatively low crime rate or borderline rural and the need for more security is lower, also the telephone pole configuration will provide less height above ground level and thus less overall coverage. Unless its on top of a hill thats the shortest tower i have seen.

I think it has something to do with regulations here in California. All of our cell towers are about this height. Most like your said are on metal polls though but some are on wooden polls too. Some of them are even disguised to look like palm trees.





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[GadgetGator]

So what would you recommend?

Higher fences for starters. Maybe a caging of some sort for the wires so some animal doesn't chew on them or yank them out.