cell tower location

[kwacka]

Good Morning

I am going round in circles and have been for 5 days now! ok, let me explain. I live in a rural area and have mobile broaband and phone some times it shows 3g and sometimes 4g so I am thinking of buying an antenna . after much research I THINK I need a directional one becuase the tower is "up the road" however after(field test) it gave me a cell id great I thought BUT the mast I can see does'nt show the cell no I obtained in fact there are 8 cells and none of them match the one I have after much searching on cellmapper and various other sites every time I put 3 in search box it shows absolutely no masts at all in my area! I assumed that 3 was using the mast I can see (EE) but like I said the cell isnt listed. Incidentaly I did the same test with my partners phone who is on plusnet and the cell id matched perfectly with the EE  mast. Every website I look at shows NO 3 masts in my area BUT I get around 5-10 download speeds but only 1-2 upload speeds so I must be connected to somebody! the maps show EE, 02, etc in my area but no 3 . I assume you "rent" from another mast operator if so could you tell me which one so I can at least point my antenna in the right direction and at least purchase the right one (directional or omni). I know there are a lot of exclamation marks but I am not angry just frustrated lol. ANY help would be appreciated. Oh my postcode is xxx 9LF.

Cheers Paul

[crypt0ninja]

Hi @kwacka,

No worries at all, I know how stressful getting this right can be trust me haha 😅

What is the Cell ID number that you mention?

Not sure what device you are using but is it possible to view and take a screenshot of the signal stats? The figures might give us a rough idea on the distance from the connected cell...

If you are in a rural area I would advise to go for a higher gain directional antenna rather than an omni.

I personally run an omni but I'm in the city where there's quite a few masts and cells (5G) around that are not too far away, however if I was to re-do my setup I would definitely go for a directional setup for the higher gain and less signal interference/noise compared to an omni.

Majority of Omni's need directional adjustment to get good performance anyway, as I have found out with a couple models of them (XPOL-1-V2-5G-41 and DWMM4-6-60-5SP omnis).

Cheers

[kwacka]

Hi crypt0ninja,

Thank you for getting back, I was looking at my e mails thinking no one has replied and then the lightbulb went on and I thought check out where you posted the question and voila 2 replies. I used my iphone to do a field test and the cell id came up as a 7 digit no but it changes every time I do it lol. Thanks for the heads up on the directional as opposed to omni I was leaning towards that. I will do some more investigation

Paul

[PeteG]

Hey, Kwacka.

Welcome to the Three Community. 

A directional antenna might help. It's not something that is provided with the hardware, and so there aren't any specific antenna that can be recommended or that have been tested by the network, and there's also no specific testing methodology for setting one up trained to the teams since it wouldn't normally be needed. 

Since we don't usually have a need of that sort of information, there's also limited information available internally in relation to the specific locations of masts, the equipment on board, or their ownership. I occasionally use cellmapper as well as in some cases it can be helpful when trying to help people, but since it's crowdsourced information, I've found that it can often be missing quite a lot of data, be wrong, or be out of date. 

Taking a look today, I was able to find 3 masts with our equipment on them that should reach the postcode you've given. Checking some internal systems here, I found that there's also 3 masts listed as being within range of that area. While this doesn't verify 100% that these masts are where cellmapper shows them to be, it's a good place to start. 

The cell IDs from cellmapper are 3864, 50314, and 10911. If you take a look at the positions of those on the map, and compare them to the position of where you're setting up, you should be able to line it up pretty accurately, and you'll have 3 sites to choose from, so fingers crossed one of those work out well for you. 

Pete.

[kwacka]

Hi Pete

Thank you so much for at least some information I was waiting an e mail and suddenly thought I would check back here lol.  The 3 sites you give are none I have found lol I couldnt get anything out of cellmapper but another site called workbook showed more sites but they were 02 . Anyway I will now do some more investigation with the info you have supplied and once again thank you so much I will hopefully be in touch when I have sorted things out to let you know how I have gone on

Paul

Paul

[kwacka]

Hi Pete

Well . another day getting nowhere lol. I must be doing something wrong in as much that I cant get cellmapper to show any towers whatsoever. I have ticked every box etc tried every name and still nothing I did put in the 3 numbers you gave in the tools and got back 3 positive pieces of information ie hex cell ref, ENB id etc but when I put it in the menu under tower it comes back with an error . What am I doing wrong ?how the hell did you find the 3 numbers you did ?

Cheers

Paul

[PeteG]

I've taken a look at the mast locations again, but this time I've popped down some coordinates that will work in Google Maps. Just paste these in and it will land you right on the locations I found. 

The 1st one is 53°15'58.7"N 2°10'43.0"W This one you can actually see on the map, it's pretty huge, but it's quite far out.
The 2nd one is 53°15'33.8"N 2°14'06.9"W This one's the closest to you, and might produce the best results.  
The 3rd one is 53°13'47.5"N 2°19'04.2"W Again this one's quite far out. 

I hope this version of the information is more useful to you, kwacka.

Pete.

[kwacka]

HI Pete

Well, that is very helpfull and yes the second one does seem the closest however the closest one to me (10 minutes walk) is ref 33177 BUT I cant seem to get the coordinates to tell you so you can see it on google maps( when I click on show in google maps it doesnt show) but I am sure my broadband is not coming form the second one on your list BUT I am extremely grateful for your help It has at least give me some insight to how to get my haed around it (well a start anyway lol) thanks again

Paul

[PeteG]

I had a look at that reference you shared and found that the cell location is at coordinates 53°13'41.6"N 2°14'15.7"W

That one's quite a bit closer to you, but I don't have any details over here that confirms if we're broadcasting from that one. Cell mapper seems to think it's EE's equipment. 

I hope you manage to get it all set up with a strong connection. 

Pete. 

[kwacka · Accepted solution]

Cheers Pete for your input at least I am a lot closer to sorting something out than when I started!

Regards

Paul