This tower guy is not happy about 5G

[dennishoddy]

Dennis 12mbs is not a bad speed on 4g especially if you are rural. To put it simply as you move away from the tower your signal degrades. Rural towers can sometimes be as far as 20 miles apart in small towns if its flat terrain. While different versions of 4G claim speeds up to 150mb or more its not the backhaul that is the limiting factor. The issue is the amount of frequency owned by the provider at that location. Then that frequency is shared between all the customers using that tower at same time. When you have more frequency you can do things to improve speed but it requires higher end phones to take advantage of those things. IE your phone can make multiple connections to the same tower on different frequencies and or multiple connections to the tower instead of 1 all at the same time increasing your speed. 5g you will not see great speed increases in rural areas unless the provide adds frequency. The very high frequency stuff is very short distance and will be used in metropolitan areas to provide very high speeds but will require you to be very close to their equipment.

The 600mhz auctions that recently completed used to be the Analog TV range. The reason they Gov went digital was to get all the frequency and sell it to providers. If your provider adds 600 to the tower near you it could add additional speed by the means I spoke about above. The lower the number the farther a signal will travel and the better it will penetrate.

We have LTE on our phones, but have a local wireless provider for internet service. Our antenna has almost 20 miles between the transmitter and our receiver. I have to use a pretty good set of binoculars to see the grain elevator that it's mounted on.
12 mbs gets us by but thats on a good day. Like you explained, users can cause a loss of speed across the bandwidth. We see slower speeds around late afternoon when folks get off work. It's just part of rural living. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

 

[TwoForFlinching]

I listened to a bit of this... this guy has just the tiniest bit of knowledge to make him THINK he understands the science, but he really doesn't have the physics background to understand what he DOESN'T know.

He should run for Congress.

 

[Cowcatcher]

There is some sort of cell tower thing out here on the ranch. Probably a mile as the crow flies from my house. I'll have to ask those guys next time I see em in here doing whatever it is they do.

 

[dennishoddy]

There is some sort of cell tower thing out here on the ranch. Probably a mile as the crow flies from my house. I'll have to ask those guys next time I see em in here doing whatever it is they do.

They probably won't tell you. Towers are put up almost overnight after the concrete is set and cured so they won't get public protest.

 

[Snattlerake]

Just stay in Inola and you are safe.

Soonerp226 they got 20 billion from selling it. https://www.fcc.gov/600-mhz-band

Which torqued my nut sumpin fierce! They make the money and we either play the $200 per month for 7500 channels of paid shopping networks or cut the cable and go back to the 50's with rabbit ears having to put up with digital snow.

 

[Snattlerake]

So you knowledgeable dudes tell me, why does my cell drop calls when I have 5 bars worth of dB signal? Hit redial until the cows come home and no calls go through until I hit a lower dB area.

 

[AKguy1985]

I thought this thread was gonna be about Tulsa's "Tower dude" that climbed the KMOD tower a few years back. He decided to rob a bank and went to prison.

 

[Hoov]

abandon all hope...?
I think I'll reserve judgement a bit...suggest ya'll might want to do likewise
fair warning - I'm a wierdo who eats tuna, uses artifical sweetner and sprays Roundup

That might be one of the best signature lines on this board. Even gives post #10 a run...

 

[Tanis143]

So you knowledgeable dudes tell me, why does my cell drop calls when I have 5 bars worth of dB signal? Hit redial until the cows come home and no calls go through until I hit a lower dB area.

Either you have a turd for a phone or that tower in that area is having a problem and you are connecting to a different tower when it finally does work.

 

[SlugSlinger]

Which torqued my nut sumpin fierce! They make the money and we either play the $200 per month for 7500 channels of paid shopping networks or cut the cable and go back to the 50's with rabbit ears having to put up with digital snow.

Have you tried a digital antenna? I bought an antenna and installed it in my attic out of site. We would lose channels at night until I figured out they are directional and must be pointed at the source. Once I moved the direction about 20 degrees. The last time I updated our TV channel presets we were getting about 40 -50 digital local channels. And there really is no digital snow. The channel is either there or not. In addition to the local channels we have Sling, Amazon, Hulu, Netflix and some other free channels on the ROKU.