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Specific tower lock?

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2019 6:54 pm
by PhilJones
I have a EM7565 modem... while looking at cellmapper, the tower my modem uses is so-so.. it has moments of being ok, other times, not so good. I would like to try a different tower that is not too much farther, in a different direction... the problem is, my antenna is omni-directional and grabs onto the the first one... are they any AT commands to either lock onto a specific tower? or block one?

Thanks

Re: Specific tower lock?

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2019 8:35 pm
by JimHelms
I do not believe you can lock to a specific Physical Cell ID.

That would be a good option to have.

One option would be to try and block signals from the unwarranted tower with some sort of metal shield/reflector.

Or, get a set of directional antennas.

Re: Specific tower lock?

Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2019 8:50 am
by swwifty
I would just get better antennas. LTE isn't designed to lock to a specific tower, because its designed for mobile applications.

It's actually fairly desirable to have multiple towers available if possible.

Also it should be noted that in LTE a cell is not the entire tower, but one specific radio/antenna combo mounted on the physical tower. This means that you could be swapping between multiple cells on the same physical tower. It just depends on how the sectors are aimed/arranged.

For example, sometimes, I can pickup nearly all the cells on my only available tower in the area:
Screen Shot 2018-12-11 at 6.48.19 PM.png
You can see a ton of cells listed under IntraFreq, which must be cells (on the same frequency as my serving cell, in this case band 2, as i'm locked to that) all on the same tower. I don't have any other towers nearby, as the cell of the tower i'm currently connecting too is already 5 miles away over very rugged terrain, so I doubt these cells are on any other cell tower.

Re: Specific tower lock?

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2019 8:04 pm
by PhilJones
Thanks for the response.. Well, I could get a directional antenna... But the one I have is a Wireng Omniariel Plus.. which is Omnidirectional and Quite $$$... it works well, I get about 96% signal, but it just seems the other tower, generally has faster download speeds.. I may try the suggestion of blocking the signal from the unwanted tower, at least to test, before investing in a direction one.