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Lock onto a single tower or boost signal?

  • 18 May 2023
  • 6 replies
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W
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Is there a way to lock onto a tower and not have it hop around, or any other methods to pull a signal from a specific tower? 

I have 2 towers close to me, and my tmo home internet bounces between them.  I live within a mile of both. My home tower gives me, on average, 150mb down & 40mb up (sometime much better: 300/60). No issue with that. The issue is that the other tower gives me less than 1mb up, usually ~0.4mb, ALWAYS. This one is further away but only by maybe a half mile. It's so bad that you can't even use wifi calling because it can't upload the packets quick enough. I can't use my normal phone calling when on that tower, either, as it has the same issue as wifi calling (garbled or robotic sounding to the other person). Additionally, the speeds are virtually no better on phone data when connected to this tower. 

I know exactly which cell (31026060598018) and band (66). I've reported the issue to tmobile multiple times, filled tickets, but they always say everything is green and basically say here's a middle finger. Since they're not willing to do anything, looking for a way I might be able to stay on my home tower and not get booted to one that doesn't provide usable service. 

 

 

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Best answer by formercanuck 18 May 2023, 20:44

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F
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I would say that it depends on using the placement tool, and results.  I.e.  If you have 2 towers ≈ same distance, one is east, one is west, I’d recommend moving your device to the western side and test (if you know where it is ‘exactly’, you can tune this).  Similarly, if you have an Android device and can install cellmapper.net, you can 3d output the path to the tower itself (it draws a line) 

Try for the line with the least interference (trees, buildings, etc), and similarly place the device in a location with a window vs wall (makes a difference), and rotate the TMHI device (it is directional - 180 degrees goes from 2 bars to 4 bars).

Try this for both towers to see what works best.  Until T-Mobile deployed 5G on the local tower, I was better off using 5G from the tower +1 mile away vs 4G LTE on the tower 1200’ away.

 

In theory, T-Mobile can ‘lock’ you onto a tower, so you’d probably have to ask them.

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Thanks for the info. The issue with the towers is that one is west/nw and the other is north. So a fairly narrow field of distance between. I have placed the device all over my house... up, down, front, back, left, right, and have turned and rotated it about every way possible. Even when I'm on my home tower with and excellent signal, I'll all of a sudden get bounced to the other tower with a poorer signal. 

F
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Then you’ll have to reach out to the T-Mobile Home Internet support, and ‘request’ that they lock your device to the one tower/site.  BTW:  Is that ‘B66’ or n66 ?

My device goes between B66 and B2 all the time (same tower) but doesn’t move much between n41 and n71.

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It is B66 and pretty much locked on n41. When I'm on my home tower, I bounce between b2 & b66 and don't see much difference. 

F
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Locked on n41 is more important than B66 on LTE.

n41 (depending on the local area capacity) can give you +500Mbps alone.    B2/B66 ~=100Mbps maybe (15x15 to 20x20).  The problem typically is with n41 upload.  I.e.  In ideal instances, I’ll get 450/60Mbps (day and night) with slider open to screen.  Close the door, and it drops to 400/30.   Move it further indoors, and its ~300/10.   When it does switch from n41 to n71, then upload shoots up, and I’m closer to 250-300/70.

n41 has a lot of capacity ‘in general’, but is doesn’t go through walls/windows/trees very well.    Similarly, n41 is using TDD to slice up its +100MHz of spectrum, and allocating most ‘time’ to download.

n71 (and LTE B66/B2) are FDD giving equal time (different slice used upload vs download) , and will typically have higher upload.

Speak to TMHI and ‘request’ that the set your SIM in your device to ‘prefer’ the one site that’s closest.

W
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Great info! I'll give them a call and see what they will do. Appreciate the responses. 

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