Bumping this thread a little with some absolutely PATHETIC antennas.
This is "my" cell tower. I put that in quotes because it's only kindasorta mine. I live 2.1 miles from this tower, and I have absolutely NO service inside of my house. If I walk out onto the back porch, I'll be lucky to get an empty triangle icon (technically this is very limited 1xRTT and has worked once when I checked my voicemail) for about a minute at a time. And no data. Nothing. And that's not even the worst part - the signal cuts dead about a mile up the road from this tower. No service for the next mile. I assume the reason I get a few bars on my back porch is because my house is at a higher elevation than the surrounding neighborhoods. Nonetheless, this tower is pathetic. I don't understand how such a tall tower has a signal radius of only a mile unless it's being powered by two AA batteries. Basically, it works okay, but only when you're RIGHT NEXT TO IT.
The tower shows up as eHRPD on my S3. I heard somewhere about this meaning that data is being routed through a 4G core, or the tower's "software" is ready for LTE hardware, but I haven't seen a single person working on this tower for years.
And then there's this on the front door of the cell site.
Nextel.
Sprint acquired Nextel in... 2004...
Wow. This hurts my head.
This is in an industrial park with several other towers.
AT&T's two towers are in the foreground, with their LTE equiptment on the bottom right and LTE tower on the far left. The Sprint tower can be seen in the middle, with the Verizon "water tower" in the far back. I watched AT&T's tower on the left (actually, more like repurposed telephone poles) get upgraded over the last month. It was a slow and painful thing for me to watch as the Sprint tower sat there, untouched.
And the behemoth. Years ago this was a green water tower. It is now Verizon's glimmering beacon. I'm sure Verizon doesn't own all of those antennas, but this is marked as their cell site and I'm pretty sure their LTE antennas are the big, fat ones. Their LTE equipment is on the other side of this tower.
Me and my friends hang out in a repurposed apartment in this industrial complex. Friends have Verizon and AT&T. They also have impeccable LTE. and I have impeccable... 3G.
I'm pissed with Sprint right now and ready to move to AT&T. Cheaper than Verizon and they just rolled out island-wide LTE several months ago.
Just a little love from Kauai.
Thanks for the info.
