Tracking down Verizon towers (specially B2/4/13)
Posted: Mon Jul 06, 2020 1:03 am
First, some background to why I am trying to do this: https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1467
Now, I signed up with a Verizon MVNO last week and am suffering from extremely poor reception. I cant get better than -110 dBm from my house.
What I need your help with:
If you think of my house as the middle of a compass, Cellmapper used to show the closest Verizon tower (let's call it T1), as a few hundred feet south east of me. Maybe there used to be a Verizon tower two yeas ago, but it's all flat land now. NO towers.
Driving around with my phone and Cellmapper moved that tower now to the north west of me - less than half a mile away from me but when I go there, my reception barely improves and I dont see a tower.
My LTE download speeds remain in the 1Mbps max range.
The second closest Verizon tower according to Cellmapper (let's call it T2) is around 3 miles away - my reception goes full 5 of 5 bars and my LTE upload/download speeds jump the 30Mbps range and I do see a tower.
The thing is, when I drive away from T2, upto about 2 miles away from it (or a mile away from home), my phone transitions over to T1 as you would expect, but when I attempt to drive around T1, it looks like I'm chasing a ghost - no tower in sight and extremely poor reception.
Since I am rural, there are no buildings around, except 1 story houses that are atleast an acre apart (so no dense housing)
There are a lot of tall trees and my home, particularly is a few feet below the average height (the roof of my home is level with the road we drive on to).
Before I can proceed thinking about antennas etc, I think I should first, locate where the closest Verizon tower - T1 really is?
Two questions:
1. Is it possible the tower location that Cellmapper has is incorrect? It's a red dot.
2. If so, how do I actually locate the tower location the my phone is connecting to?
I do have a bunch of LTE capable Android phones, a LTE modem and a RTL-SDR if either of those can help.
I have gone to the FCC site in an attempt to locate towers and antennas in my area and it does not even show the ones from Tmobile and ATT that I know are in my area.
I am attempting to compile this information in case it helps me set up my antenna (and in part, motivated by this post: https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1167#p7646).
Any help?
PS: I discovered opencellid thanks to this site. When I go on the website, it too showed me the old tower location. I then started the app and after that too showed me the old tower location, it suddenly jumped its location to a place two miles north west of the current point of the latest the tower location that Cellmapper has. Before I start driving there, I wanted to check if there's something better I can do
Now, I signed up with a Verizon MVNO last week and am suffering from extremely poor reception. I cant get better than -110 dBm from my house.
What I need your help with:
If you think of my house as the middle of a compass, Cellmapper used to show the closest Verizon tower (let's call it T1), as a few hundred feet south east of me. Maybe there used to be a Verizon tower two yeas ago, but it's all flat land now. NO towers.
Driving around with my phone and Cellmapper moved that tower now to the north west of me - less than half a mile away from me but when I go there, my reception barely improves and I dont see a tower.
My LTE download speeds remain in the 1Mbps max range.
The second closest Verizon tower according to Cellmapper (let's call it T2) is around 3 miles away - my reception goes full 5 of 5 bars and my LTE upload/download speeds jump the 30Mbps range and I do see a tower.
The thing is, when I drive away from T2, upto about 2 miles away from it (or a mile away from home), my phone transitions over to T1 as you would expect, but when I attempt to drive around T1, it looks like I'm chasing a ghost - no tower in sight and extremely poor reception.
Since I am rural, there are no buildings around, except 1 story houses that are atleast an acre apart (so no dense housing)
There are a lot of tall trees and my home, particularly is a few feet below the average height (the roof of my home is level with the road we drive on to).
Before I can proceed thinking about antennas etc, I think I should first, locate where the closest Verizon tower - T1 really is?
Two questions:
1. Is it possible the tower location that Cellmapper has is incorrect? It's a red dot.
2. If so, how do I actually locate the tower location the my phone is connecting to?
I do have a bunch of LTE capable Android phones, a LTE modem and a RTL-SDR if either of those can help.
I have gone to the FCC site in an attempt to locate towers and antennas in my area and it does not even show the ones from Tmobile and ATT that I know are in my area.
I am attempting to compile this information in case it helps me set up my antenna (and in part, motivated by this post: https://wirelessjoint.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1167#p7646).
Any help?
PS: I discovered opencellid thanks to this site. When I go on the website, it too showed me the old tower location. I then started the app and after that too showed me the old tower location, it suddenly jumped its location to a place two miles north west of the current point of the latest the tower location that Cellmapper has. Before I start driving there, I wanted to check if there's something better I can do