Tower Locations and Improving Signal Strength

[kidnotorious]

Missed this initially.... I have had a sudden improvement in speed and overall quality and I am seeing tower IDs ending in 4,5,6. If they are indeed 2100Mhz I wonder what this says about CellC's view that the 900Mhz is a much better frequency to use.

During a visit by a CellC/ZTE technician (as a result of a logged call), he informed me that the 1,2,3 suffixes are for the 900MHz transmissions and 4,5,6 are for 2100MHz. This ties in with what I am seeing: whereas previously I connected to IDs 40081 and 40391, I now see those 2 IDs as well as 40084 and 40394. As 1geoff99 stated in 'Cell C 2100 MHz in Cape Town?', I get better performance from the 2100MHz transmissions even though the signal strength is significantly lower.

 

[ajax]

I wonder what this says about CellC's view that the 900Mhz is a much better frequency to use.

They have stated they will add 2100 MHz towers in areas that are over-subscribed. There is not enough bandwidth on 2100 MHz for multiple towers in a small area.

 

[chrisc]

Where are the CellC masts in Cape Town southern suburbs?

I have abysmal coverage inside my house and have a 21 element YAGI to connect to the modem. Problem is where to point it. No-one in CellC technical knows and tell me the networking department cannot be contacted nor do they have an email address. The CellC shops are even more useless and told me their modems don't use aerials!

Before I shell out several thousand Rand on a product that might not work, I want to test a CellC modem with an aerial to see if it helps. In 8ta's case it made a tremendous difference.

Thanks

 

[MightyMuffinMan]

First did you check the coverage map?

If you are covered call cell c customer care and request to speak to technical department and after troubleshooting with you they will send someone out to test the signal etc.

When I had issues they sent over an engineer who happened to be the kzn team leader for the new network installations and yes he solved my problem.


P.S. Borrow a friends dongle to test and if it fails and you have coverage that phone customer care. Due to current legislation all Cellphone companies have to share towers so If you have a vodacom tower nearby than CEllC are probable using it. In umlazi V Section they all share a rusted vodacom tower thats due to be changed next year or something.

Hope this helps.

 

[chrisc]

Yes, the coverage map says I am fine. Called customer care and asked for technical. Got asked all sorts of funny questions - receipt number, date I bought it, date I tried it out, did I RICA it yet. Eventually, after 20 mins he asks for my address. After 1-2 mins comes back and says I am in coverage area. Since I already know that, I repeated the question above, but they no longer put people through to technical, and they don't take or return calls he says, and there is nothing he can do. End of call. On Sat went back to shop. Clueless staff don't know what an aerial is and say "masts are everywhere". I then got angry and asked for store manager (guess what, she didn't come in that day). So tomorrow, going there again with 2 large friends and will bang on desk until either we get thrown out or is sorted out.

btw: emails to "Trevor" get ignored

 

[1geoff99]

Yes, the coverage map says I am fine. Called customer care and asked for technical. Got asked all sorts of funny questions - receipt number, date I bought it, date I tried it out, did I RICA it yet. Eventually, after 20 mins he asks for my address. After 1-2 mins comes back and says I am in coverage area. Since I already know that, I repeated the question above, but they no longer put people through to technical, and they don't take or return calls he says, and there is nothing he can do. End of call. On Sat went back to shop. Clueless staff don't know what an aerial is and say "masts are everywhere". I then got angry and asked for store manager (guess what, she didn't come in that day). So tomorrow, going there again with 2 large friends and will bang on desk until either we get thrown out or is sorted out.

btw: emails to "Trevor" get ignored

Try sending a pm to Cell_C.

In case it helps, the tower I connect to is on the main road, Diep River, next to the Total service station.

 

[Cell_C]

I have abysmal coverage inside my house and have a 21 element YAGI to connect to the modem. Problem is where to point it. No-one in CellC technical knows and tell me the networking department cannot be contacted nor do they have an email address. The CellC shops are even more useless and told me their modems don't use aerials!

Before I shell out several thousand Rand on a product that might not work, I want to test a CellC modem with an aerial to see if it helps. In 8ta's case it made a tremendous difference.

Thanks

Good Day chrisc4290

Please can you PM me your details.
lets see what we can do to assist you.

Regards
~AM~

 

[chrisc]

Visited CellC shop this morning and asked for a business rep to contact me. Now I will at least get a SIM to try out. My business runs 11, 3G modems, and that should be a reasonable inventive to do some business. The guys and ladies in the CellC shop are more concerned about the appearance and features of various phones and view data as boring.

 

[dadiggle]

Electronic devices generally have more gain and/or lower noise figures in the 900 MHz band than at higher frequencies.
In other words, besides propagating better, manufacturers can make more transmit power at less cost and generally better receivers at 900 MHz. Not all aspects of 900 MHz over 2100 MHz are positive. For example, antenna apertures are a function of wavelength. This means that to have the same antenna gain at 900 MHz as 2100 MHz would require an antenna structure that is approximately twice the size. This phenomenon applies, of course, to the antennas at both ends of the link.

 

[ajax]

Posted the following on 21 Feb. Still seeing this behaviour. A friend of mine down the street today couldn't point his antenna cause of this phenomenon (for lack of a better word). I'd really appreciate gps coordinates of the towers in Stellenbosch from the Cell C rep. Yes, you have my details. Maybe you forgot about me?

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.

 

[OMB]

Posted the following on 21 Feb. Still seeing this behaviour. A friend of mine down the street today couldn't point his antenna cause of this phenomenon (for lack of a better word). I'd really appreciate gps coordinates of the towers in Stellenbosch from the Cell C rep. Yes, you have my details. Maybe you forgot about me?

Yeah, don't hold your breath, I've been waiting for months for CellC to give me an indication of where towers are in my area so that I can point my antenna in the right direction and I'm still waiting.

 

[Cell_C]

Yeah, don't hold your breath, I've been waiting for months for CellC to give me an indication of where towers are in my area so that I can point my antenna in the right direction and I'm still waiting.

Good Day OMB and ajax

just gotten updated, maps.
cant give you exact location.
but a ruff direction. have PM you both.

Regards
~AM~

 

[chrisc]

CellC guy said there is a transmitter on top of the Home Affairs bldg in Wynberg, which would put it a few hundred metres closer than the tower in Diep River, not much though. Apart from aiming the antenna at the relevant transmitter, how do you instruct the modem to use that transmitter instead of automatically choosing one.

I notice for instance that if you choose a transmitter like MTN business in Jhb, the speeds are noticably better than the default one

 

[ginggs]

Apart from aiming the antenna at the relevant transmitter, how do you instruct the modem to use that transmitter instead of automatically choosing one.

As far as I know, there is no way of instructing the modem to lock onto a particular cell, the only way is to aim a directional antenna.

I notice for instance that if you choose a transmitter like MTN business in Jhb, the speeds are noticably better than the default one

Are you referring to speed test servers?

 

[T-Man]

Hi Everyone

I see that a lot of people are wondering what the location of cellphone towers are.
I am busy setting up a database and putting them on a Google map.
When you’re next driving around, please take note of any towers.

To add a tower you need to follow this procedure -
1) Click here to open Google Maps
2) Find the location of the tower.
3) At the exact spot on the map, right click with the mouse and select “Center map here”
4) On the top right there are three icons, Print, email & link.
5) Click on the “email” icon.
6) Send the email to “NewTower@cell-tower-map.za.net”

You can also include information regarding the following
- A Short description - something like "on top of XYZ shopping centre"
- Type of tower - Mast, Christmas tree, Palm tree or Existing building (or whatever).
- Provider of the tower - Vodacom, MTN, CellC, Telkom/8ta.
- A (geotag) photo of the site.

For those of you with Android phones have a look at this. This free "war-driving" utility will capture your location, and also the LAC & CID, and signalstrength of our currently connected cell. It saves the details in a CSV file. With this info one would be able to determine the capabilites and provider of the cellphone towers.
You are welcome to email me those CSV files as well. They are stored in the /gmon folder on the sdcard.
Please take note that G-Mon eats battery life for breakfast, so plug in your charger.

This project depends on "crowd-sourcing" and I would appreciate it if you could contribute.

Click here to view the current map.

Regards

 

[ajax]

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.

Using MDMA beta 9 (command line startup) with "UMTS 900 only" or "UMTS 2100 only" band selections I can conclude that the "crappy" tower was (is) in fact a UMTS 2100 tower. Some algorithm from the network apparently decides to tell my modem or phone to switch to 2100 or 900 depending on tower loading, and that regardless of signal strength. This however causes instability on a K4505 modem I've been testing for a friend. Setting to UMTS 900 only has made it more stable.

 

[Marcovitch]

Hey guys just came across a site which shows all the CellC tower locations, could be useful I think?

Click Here: http://www.americantower.com/sitelocator/default.aspx?country=south africa

 

[ajax]

Nice link.
But it seems to be a bit outdated, at least in Stellenbosch. Can only find 3 towers. Unless I'm using the site wrong.

 

[Marcovitch]

Nice link.
But it seems to be a bit outdated, at least in Stellenbosch. Can only find 3 towers. Unless I'm using the site wrong.

Thanks, I think the site only shows CellC sites that are owned by American Tower, co-located sites most likely would not be shown

 

[TowerGuru]

Thanks, I think the site only shows CellC sites that are owned by American Tower, co-located sites most likely would not be shown

This. Also there may be some sites that have not been handed over to ATC yet.