There's nothing wrong as such, it's just that the local transmitter is probably under more load.

Also some masts are linked via microwaves and also until more 4G masts are built in areas we are nearing capacity very quickly.

The operators will have only LTE enabled the major macrocell towers.

Overtime more macrocell towers will become LTE enabled, as well as some micro cell towers. More LTE towers will get fibre upgrades. Some older masts are being used to repeat wirelessly the 4G service where they don't really meet spec (so this will be upgraded too).

The larger sites are often orange sites which historically are linked to backhaul quite badly but these are upgraded due to the coverage they give. So often they're pumping out LTE before backhaul is upgraded necessarily.

All operators are going to have this issue at first.

Even nowadays if you go into parts of a city you see sub 1Mbps speeds on the best HSPDA connection. I don't go around moaning that its 20 times slower than further out of the city.

The masts working fine it's just capacity constraints.

Have a look here. How far away is your nearest 20+ metre orange or T-mobile cell phone tower. You're looking for a major mast, not a tiny one.

http://sitefinder.ofcom.org.uk

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 29-Aug-13 15:03:01)

Edited by deleted (Thu 29-Aug-13 15:38:50)

Definitely interesting. I just got a call from EE actually (as I was asking to switch back to T-mobile). They gave me iPhone 5, unlimited minutes, unlimited tests, LTE with 2.5Gb data for £25 a month. Perhaps because they're literally giving away LTE to existing customers it's becoming extremely congested when there's not too many LTE masts.

You have plenty of masts in the area. I highly doubt whether any are LTE though.

In time it's likely that the T-mobile mast which is on the same site as the 3 mast will become LTE. It's not a large site though that will take a while.

I don't think you are connected to the Grey mast. It's only 14m high. I don't think they will have upgraded it.

I think the only likely LTE mast is the one at Cwn wood & even then I'm not sure... They are more likely to upgrade this T-mobile site at 25m than the orange site at 14m which needs new equipment to bring it upto MBNL standards & the 14m one isn't going to give huge coverage.

Here there is only one T-mobile site. Your 3 site might also hop between the Cwn wood one as well as the one you're assuming. Largely because the one you're assuming you are using has a fairly low transmit power (like all 3 masts seem to) which severely impacts its range, so the one a little further away with higher transmit powers likely to give similar coverage at your location. So room to room it may very well change masts dependant on where you are.

Also what is really crucial here is that Orange stopped supplying their mast information a few years ago. Looking at the coverage maps there's a lot of outdoor only signal. I get a feeling that the LTE is probably coming from a mast that's not on this site (built since they stopped reporting). It wouldn't surprise me if it was coming from the top of a pilon or something similar a few miles away at around 40m height with a transmit power as high as 35dBw (covering around 3-4 miles in all directions). This is the kind of LTE rollout currently. Those smaller masts all don't REALLY meet the usual LTE plans as they don't cover mass areas. You could pretty much cover the whole of Newport with LTE via 1 or 2 big masts. The masts I see on there look like the ones that'll get coverage overtime to 1) ease congestion and 2) Increase outdoor coverage. I don't think they are currently LTE though.

Looking at the coverage maps, even around all of the masts on this site, the LTE coverage shows quite low. If an LTE mast was there surely coverage would show high. It's a bit of a mystery where it's coming from for now.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 29-Aug-13 16:14:42)

Edited by deleted (Thu 29-Aug-13 17:15:11)

It would make most sense for the CWM wood mast to be LTE. It's 25m so it's going to have ok range. LTE masts are usually around 30m though currently. A 14m mast is unlikely to be LTE currently. EE want max coverage.

At Beachwood park I have identified the LTE mast. I am 99% sure this is the LTE site (I've looked through some stuff and it's an almost definite LTE site. There's an Orange and T mobile site on the mast and the orange equipment was due for an upgrade on the 2G to bring it to Edge standards as well as LTE as far as I can tell). This would give this site 3 LTE transmissions all in opposite directions so it would give coverage for miles in all directions. The site also had it's maximum transmittable power increased to 35dBw.

This site will be on high priority for doubled speeds too as it will be giving such a huge coverage.

So at Beachwood Park I would bet my life this is the LTE transmission.
http://s24.postimg.org/yn63x9wzp/LTE_mast.png

Both site, the orange and T mobile will have been made into T mobile type transmitters with 4G enabled. 46 and 47 metres respectively.

This will also cover the whole of Newport centre.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Thu 29-Aug-13 17:50:25)

Edited by deleted (Thu 29-Aug-13 18:21:58)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Have a look here. How far away is your nearest 20+ metre orange or T-mobile cell phone tower. You're looking for a major mast, not a tiny one.

I suspect this is mine:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FERCtNGHl8M/UUIZ-zW3ExI/AA...

Sitefinder is inconclusive for T-Mobile and Orange data as they stopped supplying data in 2008 or before. However the site shows T-Mobile and 3 on a 31m high mast in the right place, and an Orange mast the other side of the playing field (Which doesn't exist, so I'm assuming is the same mast) with height 27m.

I can see this mast clearly out my window, not quite the view in that pic.