| That's what i've been trying to get people to understand. If it were up to cell providers, there would be no place on the continent not served by at least one cell site. There are 3 things to take into consideration.
One: Zoning. If the local zoning only allows for a monopole of a certain hight, cell site not as useful as it could be.
Two: Engineering limitations. Every cell tower, be it free standing or structure mounted has engineering limitations, the wind load, plus static load, plus precipitation load, remember also that a rained on tower is going to have more drag on it than a dry one due to how water behaves. Monopoles are only good for a certain amount of torque at the base, and lattice towers have to worry about ice buildup and additional surface area drag. Structure mounted cell sites are limited by the structure they are mounted to, a lot of these buildings were never designed to have antennas bolted to them, and some of the mounting equipment is quite elaborate to avoid damaging brick for instance.
Three: NIMBY. There is still quite a lot of controversy about location of cell sites due to local opinions on the issue, these opinions do matter, they are valid concerns, property value, eyesore index etc etc. Also, just because a cell site is within eyesight, does not mean that your phone is connecting to it, and therefore you may not see a benefit. Some (a small %) of the towers primarily relay information when the call is being placed to a nearby cell site from the originating site using the transmitters vs the backhaul. Some of these cell sites are designed to cover a very wide area, so you , close up to it, may not be covered, and instead rely on a site farther away with a weaker signal, thankfully these are becoming less and less as cell sizes shrink to get more throughput/higher quality transmission per user, but it can and has happened.
It is not 100% up to the cell provider where and what the cell sites are, they have FCC compliance, soil testing, local opinion, structural limitations of the support structures, height and size limitations from local zoning or from other local conditions such as poor soil.
You come to my town, or the next one over, the 2 biggest most populated cell towers are lattice type towers sharing the tower with emergency and municipal equipment. The 2nd largest one has to be over by the interstate near an extended stay type motel, and a small business park, has 7 or 8 antenna bundles top to bottom, also state police radio equipment.
So, if i get poor signal, it's because i live on the edge of a municipality near a massive park, not because att doesn't want me to have good signal. I go outside of my street and i get 5 bars everywhere. Since i have wifi, it is a non-issue.
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LETS GO METS! |
