What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

Ive been looking at the tower map, and had a question... How close do
you typically need to be to a tower to get a good single?

1 mile?
3 miles?
10 miles?

Thanks,

--
Posted at SprintUsers.com - Your place for everything Sprint PCS
Free wireless access @ www.SprintUsers.com/wap

---

› See More: What is the optimum range to a tower for good signal?

Great question, but no single simple answer, and that is why a Tower map is
interesting but totally worthless as a coverage map.

By the way, any post from catonHat thats posted at SprintUsers.com is a forgery
by the lame Sprint apologists, who are likely diseased form their trips to
Mexico.

"alchemist" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Ive been looking at the tower map, and had a question... How close do
> you typically need to be to a tower to get a good single?
>
> 1 mile?
> 3 miles?
> 10 miles?
>
> Thanks,

In the old days of analog and using 3W phones, towers could be interspersed
10 miles apart. With these new cell phones, those towers need to be closer.

As to your question, it depends on how much of the population are using SPCS
in the area around those towers. More users means more and closer towers. If
you take a look at distance between towers on the interstates, those are
between 3 to 5 miles apart.

Bob

On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 16:39:04 -0500, alchemist <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Ive been looking at the tower map, and had a question... How close do
> you typically need to be to a tower to get a good single?
>
> 1 mile?
> 3 miles?
> 10 miles?

It depends on the tower's power, the phone's quality and the terrain
and usage density.

I wouldn't expect a tower in manhatten to be very effective a mile away,
but I'd expect the same tower in the middle of ****ing nowhere (tm) to
do 10 miles easily.

TCS <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 16:39:04 -0500, alchemist <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Ive been looking at the tower map, and had a question... How close do
> > you typically need to be to a tower to get a good single?
> >
> > 1 mile?
> > 3 miles?
> > 10 miles?
>
> It depends on the tower's power, the phone's quality and the terrain
> and usage density.
>
> I wouldn't expect a tower in manhatten to be very effective a mile away,
> but I'd expect the same tower in the middle of ****ing nowhere (tm) to
> do 10 miles easily.

You might want to add to the others, the heigth of the tope of the
tower above the average terrain.--

[email protected] (G5 Wizard) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> Great question, but no single simple answer, and that is why a Tower map is
> interesting but totally worthless as a coverage map.
>
> By the way, any post from catonHat thats posted at SprintUsers.com is a forgery
> by the lame Sprint apologists, who are likely diseased form their trips to
> Mexico.

Totally worthless?? Isn't the old adage, that a picture is worth a
1000 words(more if the words are poorly chooses (totally?). What in
your opionion would give a more straight forward indication of the
probable likely hood of service than a chart which indicates where
towers are (assuming and allowing for accuracy of the chart)

My guess is that the best service will be somewhere around these
towers (if in operation. Personally this chart has answered a lot
more questions than could be explained by serveral thousand pages of
writing? I would also guess that service will be somewhat less in the
areas where no towers are represented as being located, but this is
only my guess.

[email protected] (G5 Wizard) wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> Great question, but no single simple answer, and that is why a Tower map is
> interesting but totally worthless as a coverage map.
>
> By the way, any post from catonHat thats posted at SprintUsers.com is a forgery
> by the lame Sprint apologists, who are likely diseased form their trips to
> Mexico.

Totally worthless?? Isn't the old adage, that a picture is worth a
1000 words(more if the words are poorly chooses (totally?). What in
your opionion would give a more straight forward indication of the
probable likely hood of service than a chart which indicates where
towers are (assuming and allowing for accuracy of the chart)

My guess is that the best service will be somewhere around these
towers (if in operation. Personally this chart has answered a lot
more questions than could be explained by serveral thousand pages of
writing? I would also guess that service will be somewhat less in the
areas where no towers are represented as being located, but this is
only my guess.

To go along with the general consensus, the average tower will have a
range from 3 to 7 miles, but it can vary.

A tower in downtown Manhattan will only reach, at best, a few blocks
due to all the buildings and users in the area, not only that, all the
extra RF activity (other carriers, ration stations, CBs, cordless home
phones etc..) can also interfere with the signal.

Yet, a tower in, on lets say in a flat area, say central to south
Florida, and there wern't many permanant subscribers using it, it would
easily reach 10+ miles.

Now, we have to throw in some wildcards, how will other carrier's
networks affect SprintPCS's (and vice-versa?), I've seen places where
Verizon did some work on their network, and it did cause issues with
Sprint PCS's. Hospitals, some government buildings, military
intallations, and even inductrial buildings may deliberately block
signals, if you're in the "signal shade" from one of these, you'll get
no service.

Coverage can also shrink and grow as capacity increases and decreases.
A tower along a major highway will tend to have a smaller coverage area
in rush hour (we see them all on their phones!). Then, when there is
less traffic (3am?) the coverage will get back to its maximum.

Being too close to a tower can also negatively affect performance (but
I'm only talking roughly 100' at most), the signal will shoot right
over you, and in some instances, where a tower is near a steep hill,
the signal will shoot over a town at the bottom of that hill, a tower
is only less than a tenth of a mile away, but the signal shoots over
most of the town (network engineering dept had a field day with this
one in a small New Jersey costal town).

Weather can also play a factor, lightning storms tend to deal out a lot
of interference with a network, even a "spring time foliage" in the
north (when the trees bloom full of leaves) can also block signals that
were very slighly weakened in the winter to save on electricity.

I'm sure some RF engineers could easily write a text book on how to
determine how large a tower's coverage will be, there are just too many
factors to say "Yes, this is the coverage" with any wireless network
(from wireless phones, to cordless phones, WiFi, CB radio, AM/FM/XM
radio, etc..)

--
Posted at SprintUsers.com - Your place for everything Sprint PCS
Free wireless access @ www.SprintUsers.com/wap

Tech, you made some good points. The bottom line is that the towers
are adjusted to cover whatever size their cells are designed to be.
Cells are designed to be smaller where the population density is high.
That's what cellular telephony is all about.

However, I'd have preferred it if you had not said radio stations,
CBs, and cordless phones interfered with wireless phones.
Our wireless-phone frequencies are well protected from those.

Also, please modify the idea of the signal "shooting right over you"
when close to a tower. Shadowing requires a physical obstacle.
Without an obstacle, the inverse-square law of radio propagation
easily overcomes any fall-off of signal due to antenna pattern and =
pointing.

During early testing of CDMA technology at Qualcomm,
some of the engineers realized that when standing under a tower,
the base station could turn down the handset's transmitted power level
so far, that the handset's antenna could *receive* more actual power
from the base station than it was sending back from its own transmitter.

But really, this is not arguing with the main thrust of your post at =
all.
There's no general answer to the question about "range" of a tower.
---JRC---

"TechGeek" <[email protected]> wrote in message =
news:[email protected]...
>=20
> To go along with the general consensus, the average tower will have a
> range from 3 to 7 miles, but it can vary.
>=20
> A tower in downtown Manhattan will only reach, at best, a few blocks
> due to all the buildings and users in the area, not only that, all the
> extra RF activity (other carriers, ration stations, CBs, cordless home
> phones etc..) can also interfere with the signal.
>=20
> Yet, a tower in, on lets say in a flat area, say central to south
> Florida, and there wern't many permanant subscribers using it, it =
would
> easily reach 10+ miles.
>=20
> Now, we have to throw in some wildcards, how will other carrier's
> networks affect SprintPCS's (and vice-versa?), I've seen places where
> Verizon did some work on their network, and it did cause issues with
> Sprint PCS's. Hospitals, some government buildings, military
> intallations, and even inductrial buildings may deliberately block
> signals, if you're in the "signal shade" from one of these, you'll get
> no service.
>=20
> Coverage can also shrink and grow as capacity increases and decreases. =

> A tower along a major highway will tend to have a smaller coverage =
area
> in rush hour (we see them all on their phones!). Then, when there is
> less traffic (3am?) the coverage will get back to its maximum.
>=20
> Being too close to a tower can also negatively affect performance (but
> I'm only talking roughly 100' at most), the signal will shoot right
> over you, and in some instances, where a tower is near a steep hill,
> the signal will shoot over a town at the bottom of that hill, a tower
> is only less than a tenth of a mile away, but the signal shoots over
> most of the town (network engineering dept had a field day with this
> one in a small New Jersey costal town).
>=20
> Weather can also play a factor, lightning storms tend to deal out a =
lot
> of interference with a network, even a "spring time foliage" in the
> north (when the trees bloom full of leaves) can also block signals =
that
> were very slighly weakened in the winter to save on electricity.
>=20
> I'm sure some RF engineers could easily write a text book on how to
> determine how large a tower's coverage will be, there are just too =
many
> factors to say "Yes, this is the coverage" with any wireless network
> (from wireless phones, to cordless phones, WiFi, CB radio, AM/FM/XM
> radio, etc..)
>=20
> --
>

[email protected] says:

> There's no general answer to the question about
> "range" of a tower.

Agreed, thats why a Tower map is not a substitute for a coverage map.

"CAT0NHAT" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> [email protected] says:
>
> > There's no general answer to the question about
> > "range" of a tower.
>
> Agreed, thats why a Tower map is not a substitute for a coverage map.

Whoever said it was Phillipe?

Bob

John R. Copeland wrote:
> However, I'd have preferred it if you had not said radio
> stations,
> CBs, and cordless phones interfered with wireless phones.
> Our wireless-phone frequencies are well protected from those.
99.9% of the time the network is protected from interference, but in
few instances, such as Manhattan, where you have around 12 million
people, just imagine the number of 900MHz & 2.4GHz cordless phones
there are, CB radios, radio stations (AM and FM) and other wireless
signals (and lets not forget all the wireless cel towers). Luckily, the
concentration of the twoers is so thick that most of this interference
will go unnoticed.


>
> Also, please modify the idea of the signal "shooting right over you"
> when close to a tower. Shadowing requires a physical obstacle.
> Without an obstacle, the inverse-square law of radio propagation
> easily overcomes any fall-off of signal due to antenna pattern and =
> pointing.
>
> During early testing of CDMA technology at Qualcomm,
> some of the engineers realized that when standing under a tower,
> the base station could turn down the handset's transmitted power
> level
> so far, that the handset's antenna could *receive* more actual power
> from the base station than it was sending back from its own
> transmitter.
>

A friend of mine in Network ops actualy had this. He's based in NJ and
there is a town, I think it's "The Highlands" in New Jersey that there
is a tower on an apartment building. This building is roughly on a
steep hill (almost a cliff?) that is about 300 feet high, and the
building itself is somewhere around 8-12 stories.

Most of the town lies in a 'crevace' and is at sea level, his team was
sent there to figure out why there was no coverage (with the exception
of the part of the town that was farthest away from this building).

All they had to do was "point" part of the tower a little down. The
signal was 'shooting' over most of the town and going to the barrier
island and bay (and partly into the ocean).

--
Posted at SprintUsers.com - Your place for everything Sprint PCS
Free wireless access @ www.SprintUsers.com/wap

On 03 Nov 2003 22:16:45 GMT, [email protected] (G5 Wizard) wrote:

>By the way, any post from catonHat thats posted at SprintUsers.com is a forgery
>by the lame Sprint apologists, who are likely diseased form their trips to
>Mexico.

Hey Phill, I searched Goolge for a couple of your usernames and found
quite a few references to

alt.sex.stories.incest
alt.sex.pedophilia.boys
alt.sex.stories
alt.sex.teens
alt.shoe.lesbians

Can I use your one sided research skills, assume they are from you and
start reposting some of the articles? How would this be any
different from what you are doing?
You know why I won't do this? Because unlike you Phill, most people
like to research a little more and NOT selectively ignore facts or
information that my disprove their point. Yes Phill, most people do
research first, sort out the facts, and make an educated decision
about the topic using ALL the information available to them, they also
take input from others after their inital decision and adjust thier
opinion based on looking at all the information again. You on the
other hand, make a decision first, then look for items to stand behind
your decision, completely ignoring anything other then what proves
your point. This method is completely flawed. If you find no
information to prove your point, you assume it is true and post the
same thing again. This method is very obvious with your continued
suggestion the larry was the rogue poster from Sprintusers and somehow
then connect him with a usenet post with the same name. The
Sprintusers IP address proved there was no obvious connection, the
suggestion by others that there are many Larry's whatevers in the
world was completely ignored and you still continue to suggest there
is a connection when everyone else sees none at all. You wonder why
no one takes you seriously?

> alt.shoe.lesbians

That would be a fit with Larry's Shoes.

"alchemist" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
>
> Ive been looking at the tower map, and had a question... How close do
> you typically need to be to a tower to get a good single?
>
> 1 mile?
> 3 miles?
> 10 miles?
>

I believe 2 miles is about the max for little handheld digital CDMA phones.
Probably less for flip phones.