When power goes out, so does 4G LTE?

[TBolt55]

Does that seem right? I only ask because I am in an area that was affected by the recent hurricane and lost house power all weekend and during that time my phone could not get a 4G signal. I managed to get by on 3G but it was painfully slow, much slower than normal. Anyways the power just recently was restored and I tested switching my phone back over to 4G and it instantly found the signal. So is 4G somehow tied to needing the electricity to run, or could it just happened to have been a service interruption caused by the hurricane?

 

[FrankXS]

I think it was just the combination of circumstances. You experienced a power outage, a loss of signal, and a restoration of signal. The TBolt is well known not to recover from circumstances like this very well. Often requiring manual intervention. It wouldn't surprise me if, when you had 3G, you may have been able to toggle 4G back on if you tried the manual intervention methods sooner.

-Frank

 

[Mortiel]

Does that seem right? I only ask because I am in an area that was affected by the recent hurricane and lost house power all weekend and during that time my phone could not get a 4G signal. I managed to get by on 3G but it was painfully slow, much slower than normal. Anyways the power just recently was restored and I tested switching my phone back over to 4G and it instantly found the signal. So is 4G somehow tied to needing the electricity to run, or could it just happened to have been a service interruption caused by the hurricane?

Do you think cell towers do no need power to broadcast? You lose power, so do they since both you and the tower get power from the same source.

Aside, the 3G you got on was likely one of the temporary cell sites attached to trucks Verizon deploys during natural disasters. Its slow because when its all that's there to connect to, its got hundred of people all trying to use it at once.

 

[TBolt55]

Do you think cell towers do no need power to broadcast? You lose power, so do they since both you and the tower get power from the same source.

Aside, the 3G you got on was likely one of the temporary cell sites attached to trucks Verizon deploys during natural disasters. Its slow because when its all that's there to connect to, its got hundred of people all trying to use it at once.

I understand the towers use electricity to run to, it was the whole receiving 3G and not 4G that was throwing me off. I didn't know verizon used mobile sources like that I will give them kudos for moving quickly though I was only without data for a few hours, my guess for the slow speeds was the idea that the network was crammed since anyone with a smartphone in the region was most likely using it like I was to stay connected. Do you know if these trucks are currently equipped with 4G service, or is that something verizon is planning on implementing in the future?

 

[anon(394005)]

I was under the impression that all cell towers had backup generators. Also, they deploy COW's (Cell on Wheel's) BEFORE/DURING a storm? I think not, so it is very unlikely you were connecting to one. They are typically deployed AFTER a storm has passed, otherwise they risk being in the storm path and getting damaged/destroyed. From my experience in South Florida with hurricanes and overall in general, the cell network was always the last to go down when the power went out. I do know from after getting hit by Wilma in 2005, that depending on how bad the damage is in the area, some government entities can work with the cell network providers to prioritize cell network traffic and voice calls to emergency personnel (police, fire, hospitals, military, etc.), so you may or may not get service anyway even if the cell network stays up.

 

[TBolt55]

I think it was just the combination of circumstances. You experienced a power outage, a loss of signal, and a restoration of signal. The TBolt is well known not to recover from circumstances like this very well. Often requiring manual intervention. It wouldn't surprise me if, when you had 3G, you may have been able to toggle 4G back on if you tried the manual intervention methods sooner.

-Frank

Manual intervention did not work. Once I realized 4G had gone down and no data would come or go from my phone I manually switched to 3G which was down for a while. When I got 3G back and data was coming and going I tried switching back to 4G which still did not work, I tried a few times throughout the weekend before giving up and 4G only came back on when power was restored.

 

[Mortiel]

I understand the towers use electricity to run to, it was the whole receiving 3G and not 4G that was throwing me off. I didn't know verizon used mobile sources like that I will give them kudos for moving quickly though I was only without data for a few hours, my guess for the slow speeds was the idea that the network was crammed since anyone with a smartphone in the region was most likely using it like I was to stay connected. Do you know if these trucks are currently equipped with 4G service, or is that something verizon is planning on implementing in the future?

They only recently made 3G service on mobile recovery vehicles, so it depends. At some point, all cellular traffic will be on 4G, so I suppose they would eventually make

I was under the impression that all cell towers had backup generators. Also, they deploy COW's (Cell on Wheel's) BEFORE/DURING a storm? I think not, so it is very unlikely you were connecting to one. They are typically deployed AFTER a storm has passed, otherwise they risk being in the storm path and getting damaged/destroyed. From my experience in South Florida with hurricanes and overall in general, the cell network was always the last to go down when the power went out. I do know from after getting hit by Wilma in 2005, that depending on how bad the damage is in the area, some government entities can work with the cell network providers to prioritize cell network traffic and voice calls to emergency personnel (police, fire, hospitals, military, etc.), so you may or may not get service anyway even if the cell network stays up.

Yes, every cell site has a generator. However, the generator does nothing when the site itself blows a breaker. I noted about 9 occurrences of blown breakers on site that had to be fixed just in Virginia from Irene alone.

Depending on severity, they have previously set of temp cell sites weeks before storms expecting major network damage. Temp cell sites like those are small pods about 4' tall drilled into the nearest solid high ground (emergency teams prefer concrete) and can withstand category 3 hurricane winds/rain/flooding (not to mention they use generator with a beastly backup battery), as opposed to trucks that we use for a more on-the-spot vertical.

 

[KJ78]

its possible that they turn LTE off and just run 3g to keep the battery backups working longer. or, everyone could be on their cell phones posting on facebook that their power is out and that is overloading the LTE and kicking you down to 3g. or maybe the nearby LTE tower is completely offline and you are getting 3g only from a further away tower.

 

[Shygar]

I'm in northern NJ and I haven't had any 4G since the hurricane on Saturday/Sunday.