When I 1st switched to T-mobile, I had a terrific connection from my upstairs landing, looking out through a west-facing window. This summer, however, I had to lower a sun shade on that window, and the connection fell from “Excellent” to “Very Good.” Is this normal? Can a signal not penetrate a sun shade very well?
It would largely depend upon the sun shade’s materials. Some shades are made from reflective materials and others are metal; both could affect cell signals. There are many common building materials that can affect signal reception. A few are listed here:
Raise the shade and see what happens. Be thankful you don’t live on an older house with plaster walls and metal lathe. But what’s really important is not signal strength but rather signal quality. Running speed tests is a better measure of signal quality than number of bars if the gateway doesn’t provide signal quality metrics other than “Excellent”, “Very Good”, etc.
P.S. Not advocating for a signal booster since those can be hit or miss without exhausitve research and investigation.
When I 1st switched to T-mobile, I had a terrific connection from my upstairs landing, looking out through a west-facing window. This summer, however, I had to lower a sun shade on that window, and the connection fell from “Excellent” to “Very Good.” Is this normal? Can a signal not penetrate a sun shade very well?
It won’t take much to go from ‘Excellent’ (hard to get) to ‘Very Good’. Eg. If I open/close my window on my sliding door, it goes from ‘Good’ (closed) to ‘Very Good’ (open). It is important to realize that each of these are ranges. If I’m at RSRP of -101 dBm, and opening a window moves it to -98dBm that will change it from ‘Good’ to ‘Very Good’, while a change from -105dBm to -101dBm will not change anything on the reading. You should be happy to have ‘Excellent’ and even ‘Very Good’ service.
With ‘Very Good’ Service, I can reach +500Mbps/60Mbps, while ‘Good’ is typically ~400Mbps/20Mbps, and Weak goes down to ~200-250Mbps/15Mbps.
Note: This is 5G band 41 + 4GLTE B2 ‘or’ B66
5G band 71 will give lower download, higher upload and typically better ‘Connection Quality’ readings
As mentioned above, signal quality matters. I typically have very good signal quality (LTE ~ 13-15, 5G n41 ~7 to15) , as the tower’s range is short, and pointed to a residential area. Similarly, RSRQ is -4 on 5G and -7 on LTE.
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