LAST UPDATE: JULY 18, 2007
Got some good cell site hunting information?
Do you have a good web link regarding cell site hunting?
Please submit it here
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Taken from this website's FAQ:
How
do I find out if a certain carrier will provide service
on a certain tower or in my town?
First off, go to the website of the wireless carrier or provider you are interested in and scour their website for coverage maps. Some carriers have maps down to the street level which can show you current and or planned service maps.
Here are a few. Remember, these maps may not be accurate and may not depict new towers nor new coverage and or service.Cingular Street Level Coverage Maps
Nice tool to zoon in baed on your zip code to identify coverage.
T-Mobile Street Level Coverage Maps
Nice tool to zoon in baed on your zip code to identify coverage.Sprint PCS and NEXTEL Street Level Coverage Maps
Nice tool to zoon in baed on your zip code to identify coverage.If the maps dont work, and your feeling a bit like an explorer, do some footwork. If you do any of these suggestions and find out any info, please let me know so I can post in on my website (and give you the credit!). I only post cell site info for locations within New England.
If the cell site is new and it is easily accessible, you can simple go by the site and watch for a cell site technician / company. While they are doing work at the site you can simply ask them about what carriers are there and are planned. Each provider will most likely hire different site technician, so they may not have any or all of the answers.Next in line is to monitor a town's Planning Board / Commission website for their minutes to see who has applied for a permit to build or co-locate on an existing cell site or structure. You can simply search the online minutes and look for key words such as "tower" or "antenna" as well as each carrier's name (like Cingular, Sprint, etc.). This is a really good way to find out information long before a tower is constructed or any antennas are installed. If you find some online data from a town website for a new cell site, please pass it along to me!!!!!!
List of All New Hampshire Municipal Websites
All of New Hampshire's municipal websites, sorted alphabetically by town name.If the town does not have it's minutes online, then he next step would be to simply go to the town offices and ask the planning commissioners if anyone else wireless carrier has asked to co-locate on the tower or has applied for a permit to install equipment.
Or you can simply watch the tower and see if any new atennas appear in time, then you will know someone else is co-locating.Got any other input to add here? Please let me know and I'll be happy to add it!
How do you know what antennas at a site is for which carrier?
General ways to know:
- Visit the cell site and look at the power distribution panel to see which providers are present. This method may not always be feasible due to site location, fenced in areas, etc. but it is the EASIEST way to find out.
- Use a cell phone for each carrier/provider your interested in and physically go to the cell site. Unscrew the antenna from the phone (if you can) and if you still have full signal strength, then chances are that provider is located at that site. This also may not work, especially if you are in a populated metropolitan area where many carriers are present in a close proximity. For rural cell sites, this method works fine. Helpful in these situations is to get the cell phone(s) you have into Field Test Mode and decipher what it's telling you, especially the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) and any information provided on the nearest cell site neighbors/candidates for handoff's. The Field Test Mode and Links Page contain a plethora of information on Field Test Modes for various phones.
- Be familiar with antenna types. Flat faced antennas are used by all carriers
in the typical 120° triangular (3 sector) configuration. Sometimes
these are tall and wide, or short and narrow. Sometimes you'll see highly
directional (miniature Yagi's) being used. These Yagi's are used by all
carriers. The omni directional arrays are generally used by non-PCS carriers.
4 antennas per sector (3 sectors per cell site, each providing 120-degrees of coverage (our of 360-degrees)) could be NEXTEL or Verizon sites. Some older Nextel sites only have 3 antennas per sector. For NEXTEL, two of the 4 antennas are in use, per face, at any given time, the other two act as a "hot standby" pair. Each rack containing the Nextel BTS controllers actually contains two controllers, one connected to the first pair of antennas and the second connected to the 2nd pair of antennas. This is for redundancy in case of failure of one of the controllers.
Verizon often provides voice service on 2 antennas, and the other two can be EV-DO data service. - Most times a single antenna per sector is typically a PCS carrier (Cingular does this very often in New England, but Sprint sometimes does it too). Most sites have 2 antennas per sector. 2 antennas provde the ability to use a "rake receiver" to separate or combine signals per face for better signal analysis (fade, multipath, etc.)
- On sites with multiple carriers present, you can use a pair of binoculars to follow the cabling from the antennas down to which shelter/BTS they go to, and often those boxes will be labled or will look a certain way for particular carriers (thanks to Paris Wood for this input!).
That's all for now. Please let me know if you have info to add. Email Me
The CDMA *2280X codes explained
Using *228XX lets you switch from Cellular A, Cellular B, PCS
A, PCS B, PCS C, PCS D, PCS E, and PCS F.
For instance...if you are in a
big city, say New York or Chicago for instance where Verizon holds both cellular
and PCS licenses, by dialing the certain *228 code, it "kicks you onto" that
spectrum where the signal might be stronger, less network traffic, etc.
You can also use it to idenify if another wireless carrier (like Sprint PCS,
Alltel, or US Cellular) is active on a band with CDMA service.
Here are the codes:
*22800 - cellular A
*22801 - cellular B
*22802 - PCS A
*22803 - PCS B
*22804 - PCS C
*22805 - PCS D
*22806 - PCS E
*22807 - PCS F
If when you dial *228XX and the call says "CALL FAILED" what this means
is that there is no CDMA carrier using that band but it might be used by a TDMA
/ GSM carrier.
Here in the New England Market. dialing *22803 will bump you to Sprint PCS (If
there is service in the area you are at). It's an easy way to find out if Sprint
service is active at a given cell site or in a general area. Also, dialing *22804
will force your phone to the EV-DO PCS "C" band of Verizon, which should show
"Activation Failed" because that band is data only (no voice services, and no
activation possible).
In New Hampshire, you can dial *22800 to bump to US Cellular's CDMA service to
see if they are present.
PILOT SET INFORMATION FOR CDMA FIELD TEST
Q: With an LG VX6000 phone in field test mode, it shows one
Active Pilot, which was 224, after I made a call, it showed numbers in all
three Active Pilots. They switched, meaning 224 was sometimes Active Pilot
Number 3, sometimes Active Pilot 2, sometimes the first Active Pilot...What
does that exactly mean? Does it mean that I'm using three cellsites at the
same time? Why do the Active Pilots switch each other off even when just standing
on the same spot?
A: During a call the phone uses the Active Set of signals from up to 3 (or 6) tower sectors simultaneously. The phone adjusts the signals for their different time delays and adds them together into a single stronger signal.
At idle the phone can monitor only one pilot signal. Each pilot signal is unique, so it doesn’t make sense to add pilot signals together. But the phone is continuously scanning all possible pilot signals and tracking the Active Set, Candidate Set, Neighbor Set, and all the remaining possible pilots.
The strongest pilot can change within a few inches or with very slight changes in how the signal travels through the air. As the various sectors get weaker or stronger the phone promotes and demotes them within and between the sets.
The Active Pilot is the Pseudo Noise offset your phone is hearing. This varies by market but usually, as you go clockwise around a tower from the north, the number will advance by +168. You can use this to determine if you are going between sectors on the same tower, or switching between 2 different towers.
On a CDMA network, the phones will not show any specific tower ID, as it is not important for the network. Each base station though usually has 3 PN Offsets On a GSM network (like Cingular) you CAN find out the actual tower number as well as sector number 1-3.
in CDMA everything about freq reuse and co-channel interference
goes out the window, since all CDMA sites in a given area run on the same
frequency (or frequencies in areas that are using multiple CDMA carriers)
and multipath actually *helps* CDMA signals (rake receiver.) Sectorization
of CDMA sites is done usually to add capacity (by allowing for more PN offsets
and Walsh codes in a given area) and to improve propagation by focusing signal.
---
The good thing about having so many CDMA carriers is you don't need a seperate phone for each one (unless your lazy like me). Once you get the field test working on your phone *2280[0-7] will force you onto another carriers network. CDMA it will stick for a couple of second. TDMA/GSM will just go dead and then go back to your home carrier.
Useful for jotting down PN offsets... the number after the 0 depends on the frequncy block of the carrier, i.e 0 = A Celluler, 1 = B, 2-7 A-F PCS. You can consult the FCC to see who is licensed to what blocks in your area so you can avoid stumbling on to the TDMA/GSM carriers and waiting for the phone to give up.
I should also mention, since we are building generic tower hunting tips that a GPS unit is extremely handy! No matter how many regulatory filings you get your data from, many will be inaccurate from being across the street of the site to a different locality. Also there are many sites it might not be possible to even get coordinate data from so this helps.
Its very satisfying to load the data into a spreadsheet and then import the spreadsheet into a map program such as MS S&T. Instant tower maps and can reveal where a carrier might put new sites for general coverage holes (as you have reported these still exist and in your area probably in great numbers) as well as places where new cells might get droped in for capacity reasons.
Also you may want go to your building inspection department
and ask for a list of electrical permits for a carrier. This should theoretically
get you all of the sites in that locality that have been inspected as of your
visit.
--
Another thing is to drive around - where ever you go - and keep your eyes out for a cell tower. When you see one, turn off and look at the cabinets. There'll usually be a sign on them that says the company. If there's a fence, there may be a sign on the fence. If there are no signs, locate the power panel and meters for the site. Those are usually marked with the carrier name next to each power meter.
How to decode s Sprint PCS site code identifier (Thanks to PBW for this nice ditty!)
