Tower Locations and Improving Signal Strength

[Cost Conscious]

They won't make that information public because the tinfoil hats will have a field day when they discover the amount of towers in their backyard emitting deadly beams.

"TinFoil hats" - I love that mental image!

 

[RichardG]

Just email onlinesupport [at] cellc dot co dot za - give them your home address the area you in suburb, etc and ask them nicely to send you the whereabouts of the base station and make some sob story up as you want to buy a 3g antenna to improve your signal etc, they will send you the necessary details but will take time.

 

[ajax]

Just email onlinesupport [at] cellc dot co dot za - give them your home address the area you in suburb, etc and ask them nicely to send you the whereabouts of the base station and make some sob story up as you want to buy a 3g antenna to improve your signal etc, they will send you the necessary details but will take time.

I tried that already. No response.

 

[Cell_C]

Hi "Ajax"

Please resend your address, i will send the coordinates of the nearest tower to you. you dont have to make up a sob story ;-)

Regards

Cell_C
DM

 

[Cell_C]

You mean like this one?

Hi "Edwe"

That one you already have. I'll send a detailed map from Google Earth with 3G coverage outlay, it should be helpful.

Regards

Cell_C
DM

 

[Bundu]

Thanks ajax, will give it a shot with my Nokia E72

 

[Bundu]

Hi Cell_C, I sent you a PM

 

[kidnotorious]

Regarding pointing an external antenna to your nearest base station....

I would imagine that if you got your laptop and went up onto your roof, put on MDMA you would be able to orientate the antenna by trial and error. Basically, the signal will be best when the antenna is in the direction of the base station.

Other than that MDMA shows the cell tower IDs and there is a post here somewhere that tells how the last digit can be used to determine which direction the transmitter is pointed, so you can work backwards from there.

 

[ajax]

Stuck on a crappy tower

I've been seeing some weird things with my signal and modem's tower
selection.

I'm picking up a few towers, the strongest being tower ID 44001 at around -70 dBm. The weird thing is my modem doesn't want to keep using it, it seems. I regularly switches to a much weaker tower, tower ID 44006 at -87 dBm.

I don't think it's cell breathing at all - while I'm looking at the signal strength reported in MDMA all of a sudden the tower ID changes to the weaker one and then 2 seconds later the signal sits at -87 dBm. And if my modem is not inside the corner reflector the signal would drop to around -97 dBm. This obviously impacts on my speed!

I thought my E1820 modem was stuffed, but I see the same behaviour on my Galaxy S with a different Cell C sim. Letting the phone stand in the window I get full bar, and suddenly within about 5 seconds the signal drops down from full bar to about 1 or 2 bars. Then 30 seconds to 2 minutes later, it's suddenly back up to full bar again.

(This was driving me nuts on Saturday, as I was trying to find a better spot/position for my modem. Imagine trying to point an antenna at the best tower if your modem just randomly switches between towers, regardless of signal strength.)

I usually use a router and the strongest signal my router reports is around 64%. For weeks in the same spot this has been the signal reported, give or take 3% either way. When I plug the short USB extension into the pc it would report around -70 dBm, tower 44001.

This morning I got up at 05h15 and I see it reports a 38% signal. This corresponds to about -88 dBm. So now it seems I'm stuck on the crappy tower!

In all of the above, the modem or phone has been in a completely static position. So why is this happening? Is there any modem command to force the modem to use the stronger tower? Or is the network (wrongfully) telling my modem to use crappy towers? I refuse to believe that this is normal signal propagation phenomena. We have not had any storms lately and there has been little to no wind either. And it can't be tower maintenance as my modem would drop the connection if they were switching the towers on/off.

 

[ginggs]

I'm picking up a few towers, the strongest being tower ID 44001 at around -70 dBm. The weird thing is my modem doesn't want to keep using it, it seems. I regularly switches to a much weaker tower, tower ID 44006 at -87 dBm.

I think that's a different sector on the same tower.

 

[xera]

This is a bummer !!!!

What are they saying there?

I can't even load the page properly

 

[kidnotorious]

This brings up an interesting point. Is it possible to make a modem "lock" onto a specific tower and if so, are there any IT boffins who can write the code.

@ajax, this is by no means foolproof but I have noticed that the compass bearing of your modem kinda has some relationship to the tower it picks up so u might find that with it pointing in certain directions you may be more likely to get the better tower and stay longer on said tower ID

 

[ajax]

This brings up an interesting point. Is it possible to make a modem "lock" onto a specific tower and if so, are there any IT boffins who can write the code.

This would be ideal. My old Nokia 6680 can do that with engineering menus loaded. Not aware of any newer devices that can do that.

@ajax, this is by no means foolproof but I have noticed that the compass bearing of your modem kinda has some relationship to the tower it picks up so u might find that with it pointing in certain directions you may be more likely to get the better tower and stay longer on said tower ID

Yes, I've noticed that too. In general it should be positioned vertically. Doesn't make sense though as most users would have the dongle plugged into a pc or laptop which would be horizontal. Why couldn't they polarise the towers' antennas horizontally? But once the dongle is positioned vertically, then rotating it along it's axis only makes a few dB's difference I've noticed, not 10's of dB's like I'm seeing.

Onlinesupport says they're probably working on new towers in my area. That's nonsense I think. Tower 44001 has been in existence since I got my dongle in December. The dongle should always select the tower with the strongest signal.

 

[kidnotorious]

Doesn't make sense though as most users would have the dongle plugged into a pc or laptop which would be horizontal. Why couldn't they polarise the towers' antennas horizontally? But once the dongle is positioned vertically, then rotating it along it's axis only makes a few dB's difference I've noticed, not 10's of dB's like I'm seeing.

I was wondering when someone would pick up on this. I use a roll of toilet paper and slide the modem up the core.

 

[Strange]

ajax, where in Stellenbosch are you? I have the same problem...

 

[SUPERMAN89]

I was wondering when someone would pick up on this. I use a roll of toilet paper and slide the modem up the core.

HAHA +1
The answer lies in the design of the usb port!

 

[ajax]

ajax, where in Stellenbosch are you? I have the same problem...

Send me a pm and we can discuss further. If we join forces (i.e. pool our data together) we could convince Cell C that something's up.

 

[ajax]

I spoke to someone in the industry and he says that the network does not only take into account the signal strength of a user but also the noise on the channel. Other users appear like noise on the channel, so the network may deliberatly be putting me on a different (weaker appearing) tower to actually give me higher throughput.

A few speedtests should confirm this.

 

[ajax]

I've done some speed tests and they were inconclusive.

But this morning at 05h30 I saw I was again stuck on the crappy tower (the one with the 15dB's weaker signal). So I don't think it's because Cell C deliberately put me on that tower because it may give me higher throughput. After all, 05h30 is not really a busy time is it?

So what if this occurs in other areas as well? How would you check your coverage if you can't be sure that you're using the tower with the strongest signal? How would you find the "hidden" towers unless you know about them?

 

[ajax]

This morning (Saturday) at 7am I was temporarily "placed" on the tower with the strong reception. Speed test only gave about 2 mbit/sec. Then 10 minutes later I was back on the "crappy" tower. Then the speed test gave 3.5 mbit/sec! So a contradiction of my previous observations.

So I'm wondering then if this is happening in other areas. It would be an interesting experiment for those with directive antennas or corner reflectors to turn them to try other towers even though they're not picked up as strongly? I am still not convinced that it's Cell C that's deliberately putting my modem on the tower with the weak reception. But I can live with 3.5 mbit/sec I suppose.