Cell just down or is it decomissioned.?

[schmidtj]

I moved to TMobile two weeks ago. Service has been exemplary at my home. Cell one block away -95db signal usually 3 to 4 iPhone bars. Today I noticed the signal was much weaker. -110db 2 iPhone bars. I don’t see any crews at the cell site so I’m wondering if this is a temporary outage or did the cell get shut down. Is there any way to determine this? What’s weird also the cell I’m connecting to now is a mile away (versus a city block) and my Apple Watch still gets two dots signal strength. Does this sound reasonable for a 30 foot cell that far away which is LTE band 2 and 66 capable. With the exception of the watch I’ve been using cellmapper.net to determine the cells I’m using based on PCI numbers. 

[JossMan]

On 8/14/2020 at 6:47 PM, schmidtj said:

I moved to TMobile two weeks ago. Service has been exemplary at my home. Cell one block away -95db signal usually 3 to 4 iPhone bars. Today I noticed the signal was much weaker. -110db 2 iPhone bars. I don’t see any crews at the cell site so I’m wondering if this is a temporary outage or did the cell get shut down. Is there any way to determine this? What’s weird also the cell I’m connecting to now is a mile away (versus a city block) and my Apple Watch still gets two dots signal strength. Does this sound reasonable for a 30 foot cell that far away which is LTE band 2 and 66 capable. With the exception of the watch I’ve been using cellmapper.net to determine the cells I’m using based on PCI numbers. 

Either the site is down for upgrades, or your connecting to a cell site that has had recent capacity upgrades and your phone is preferring it over the closer site.  Band 2 1900MHz is T-Mobile's primary LTE band with B66 AWS 1700/2100MHz as an extra capacity layer,  you could have been connecting originally to the closer site that potentially had 700MHz LTE.  Best way to look at PCI's and frequency band indicators is going into your iPhone's dialer and typing *3001#12345#* and go to the LTE section and start tracking the PCI's near you.  T-Mobile might be a challenge because their PCI's all over the place (at least here they are). 

[schmidtj]

Thanks. All the T-Mo cells here are Band 2 and 66. I almost always connect on 66. As far as my cell being MIA it came back that evening. Perhaps my imagination but the few speedtests I performed after it’s return seem faster.