I work on cell towers. Done it for 15 years and it's nice to see just facts and not opinion when it comes to a very simplified version of what i do but you got the nail on the head great video
im a PM for a company that does both macro and small cell, i expected to have to correct a lot in this but it was so nice seeing someone finally just give actual facts about it all. the amount of karens that harass our small cell guys in the suburbs and dense multi-use areas is insane.
Having worked for a mobile carrier since 2006... I love this video! Really accurate, and yup we use microwave for a lot of backhaul, esp in rural areas. It's also one of the biggest points of failure. You mention the antennas being angled downwards to reduce interference, but that's not totally correct... Carriers usually own a big chunk of spectrum, and we plan adjacent towers to run at different frequencies. They're typically angled downwards as the antenna are so directional, that if you don't angle them you end up with black spots directly under the tower... Some towers we can even change these angles remotely.
Always fun when you have to take a site down for maintenance and the switch calls you with the "Hey man, gonna need you to speed this one up. 12 other sites are down." God damn microwave sites.
ugh. I would be sorely tempted to respond with "yes, spending time listening to you complain is making it *massively* easier for me to get this thing back up and running ASAP."
@@alecmanning9177 what? Here in Europe we can’t take sites down. They only allow it under their schedule precisely to not (i have another 15 down), every time we have some maintenance or something we have to ask for a `ticket”, they then check their stuff like important site or important client near by, only then they send you a number/code which you have to give to the operator on the agreed day/hours, only then you can shut down.
@@epicgamer42069 cell antennas basically uses built in(newer antennas) or external(older antennas) attached motors/Remote Electrical Tilt(RET) to change the angle and tilt to optimize the signal.
I'm a city dweller so I haven't seen the cactus towers, but the tree towers are getting much better. They're actually passable for more than a glance while driving by at freeway speeds now.
Fun fact: my great-grandfather helped develop microwave transmission technology, specifically for television at the time. He was NOT happy to learn that it was going to be used for anything OTHER than educational programming! But his team's work helped bring us the greatest communications infrastructure that's ever existed. If only he had lived to see what good has come of it!
@@MandoMTL Would you like to add something of actual value to this conversation, or are you just here to sling pointless insults at a man who's been dead for decades?
in addition to the cactus disguise, there are also monopole towers disguised as pine trees or palm trees. I always thought it was funny that many city-dwellers want good cell signal but can't bear to see an antenna or tower.
Oh! The stories! Zoning meeting after zoning meeting, person after person with argument after argument about not wanting to see it from their house, then 6 months later calls to the carrier about why they have terrible reception at their dwelling. It never fails.
I'm a civil/structural engineer who specializes in the steel design of these towers. It's a pretty interesting, in-depth topic that a lot of people don't realize exists.
@@XxGAMERxXPS3 They're pretty sturdy. Wind is the biggest design factor involved, and most commercial installations are designed for more antenna loading capscity than will ever actually be installed on them. Most antennas and equipment mounts will also fail before the towers do, so if a wind speed higher than the tower was designed for ever occurs, the antennas may fall off, but the towers are usually still standing without issues.
I guess they have foundation these towers right , Its just normal foundation nothing fancy. thank you so much for information and time, Also for all towers you helped with!
I always get (overly) excited when seeing them even though they're operated by a carrier which I'm not subscribed to; my bucket list item is to run a speedtest on them!
actually managed to speedtest and get around 3.5gbps down while in an intersection (someone else was drivng me somewhere), but i haven't seen the little box pole yet :
The main thing that was incorrect is the part about who was first on the tower is the highest. Its all about density, and of course not all cell sites(As towers are not the only way a Cell site can be deployed) need to be on the highest available height. There is alot of detail that is availble suce as what the Antenna(Or panels as most would say) look like, what the different shapes mean, what the boxes behind the antenna are(RRUs), etc. Its honestly kinda addicting getting to see a tower, and know which carrier is which, what spectrum is deployed based on the equipment, etc. Also there are a whole can of worms when it comes to small cells, DAS systems, CoWs, COLTS, Blimps, drones, etc. AT&T actually has a blimp called Firstnet one. They also have drones to accompany it to disaster areas for quick cell service recovery while the macro is being restored.
Coolest looking towers are the old AT&T long lines microwave towers with the horn antennae. In rural areas, they’re these massive, imposing towers that can be seen for miles, and it’s fun when you get the right angle, and can see the next long lines tower the horn antennae are pointing at
America uses the metric system for $ 📐💰💵💸💵💸 for everything else America uses the English imperial system. $ 1billion, $1trillion,$1quadrillion,$1pentillion etcetera. We in holland unfortunately use the opposite, billion here is what you call $trillion or 1000 times a billion.
@@mrkitty777 The names of large numbers has nothing to do with "metric" (SI) or "imperial" (US customary) measurements. English and most other languages use short-scale (prefix increments by powers of 1,000). Some languages mostly from Western and Central Europe use long-scale (prefix increments by powers of 1,000,000). Also it's quintillion, not "pentillion".
As a Dutchie who works as a tower climber I'm always amazed by just how different the towers look across the Atlantic. Way bulkier and technically completely different. Here you'll usually have a tower (usually either by VDL or Kaal) and each provider that's in there only has three antennas. Sometimes an operator adds another but that's to boost a certain frequency for example or as an added upgrade. Feeders and combiners are starting to become a thing of the past as more and more sites have their radios up in the tower as well. Mechanical down tilt is used sparsely as it can be done electrically for up to 6 degrees with the vendor were working with. Also no concrete building to put the hardware in, just cabinets on a steel frame and a fence. Roof-top sites are always completely different and depending on the roof. But I guess the main difference is that the operators don't actually own the towers over here. Only the temporary structures and usually not even those are owned by the operator but owned by the contractor who builds them. Back in 2007 KPN, one of the major operators here, owned most of the towers but because of the monopoly that was arising it was forced to sell all of them by the competition authority. Now you have companies owning towers but not doing anything with telecom and you have actual operators. Works quite good. All three operators are in a trade association as well, making guidelines to make work in towers and on roof-tops a lot safer. A lot can be said about the Dutch telecom-sector but it is actually very well organized.
They call them "Monopines". The ones disguised as palm trees, which obviously are more common in places like California and Florida are called "Monopalms". Had to rescue a guy off a monopine once. The branches are basically made of fiberglass with a steel support rod that stands out from the tower about 18 inches from the tower that the "tree branch" fits onto. If you step on the branch for support further out than 18 inches, your weight is essentially only being supported by fiberglass, and the branch will break off and you'll come swinging into the tower with enough force to knock your a$$ out. A climber I was with did just that an we had to take him to the hospital while he was basically out cold from impacting the tower.
What's funny is that there's a building here in Nashville TN that is called the Batman building that's mostly filled with AT&T... Except it's definitely more reminiscent of the tower of sauron according to some photo editors lol. Look it up, it's hilarious. Your Sauron eye edit reminded me of it
Here in Utah you can sometimes see these flat white panels up on mountains to reflect microwave backhaul around terrain that's in the way It's also why one backcountry ski run has the name Microwave 😂
Funny how I click this video, it starts and data breaks down on my phone... Almost as if my cell company doesn't want me to know how their towers work.
There's a huge ugly concrete building in the centre of my home town, used to house a massive grain silo but has been disused for decades, only reason it still exists is that all the telephone companies bolted their transmitters to the top of it
They are directed down to avoid black spots just near the tower(the tilt is mostly controlled remotely from a NOC (network operation center)). The interference is avoided by doing cell planning in a way that no adjacent frequencies are same(Also called frequency reuse). Also as other carriers have different frequencies so interference is completely avoided. Lower the frequency, higher the coverage area and higher the frequency, lower the coverage area. Also 5G cell areas are smaller than 4G and 4G is smaller than 3G and 3G is smaller than 2G due to the fact that higher bandwidth requirement shrinks the coverage area. There is a phenomenon called cell breathing. More people and bandwidth being used in a cell area reduced the coverage. This is especially an issue for people living at the edge of cell areas as their phone is constantly switching between cell sites. These are the places where the telcos put micro sites. Also carriers using lower frequency will have indoor coverage area issues and carriers using higher frequencies will have better indoor coverage. But carriers like low frequencies as it reduces the number of cells required due to higher coverage of lower frequencies.
Yeah, i had the same reflexion. Canadian not using metric unit... i downvoted the video for that. Serioulsy in 2022 using the imperial system ONLY is just plain stupid. They should only use the metric system, or if they really want to help the american add the imperial too, but ALWAYS metric first and imperial second.
Why do you care? The imperial system more closely reflects units of measurement based off of a comparison to parts of the human body, meaning that you ALWAYS have the measurement tool with you. Standard measurements are far easier to convert into larger and smaller units, making the transportability of the same information easier. Both modes are useful units of measurement, and both should be commonly understood.
Tilting the antenna can not only be done mechanically, but also remotely via electrical polarisation. My job is to manage the tilts to get the most performance and coverage by balancing the load between cell towers!
As somebody who works in Microwave networking, thank you for not leaving us out. SO many things use microwave backhaul and yet it is still such a tiny industry compared to any other type of networking.
I love staring at radio towers, now I know the differences between the towers and what the different antennas mean. I’ve also never seen a cactus tower.
The three panel antennas per side isn't really to cover 40 degrees each: they each do 120 degrees, but some panels are designed for different frequency bands (for the same carrier), and even different frequencies within the same band to be able to communicate with multiple devices at once.
People talking about the video as if it were 100% on point. I on the otherhand think that most reasoning for cell towers using three sectors, the reason for the tilt and the reach is actually either only secondary or wrong. The use of different frequency, spacial reuse and load balancing is far more important.
Here in Australia it’s common to have towers as large as 100 metres or more (330 feet) in rural areas and those might be on the tallest hill as well further increasing their distance above sea level. In our cities though, rooftop and light pole towers are common, in suburban areas it’s common to put them on top of or behind a shopping centre (mall) or petrol (gas) station. That gives the indoor coverage needed to businesses in the area while also providing coverage to homes nearby
In some parts of California, we have very realistic looking palm tree towers. First time I saw one I had to do a double take because something just didn't seem right.
It's usually the trunk; it's too 'perfect.' But they're definitely getting better and the palm tree ones are usually the best. That said, while I've never seen one, those cactus ones would totally get me.
This City dweller has never seen a cell tower disguised as a cactus. 😿Then again, I live in NYC where the only times I see an actual cactus is when I go to Home depot or even the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
BREAKING NEWS: a famous youtuber Linus Sebastian was arrested due to cell tower sabotage, he claims he accidentally dropped the antenna that hit the security guard to death
My parents house is the same, has been that way since long as I can remember, back to the mid 90s, when cellular phones were the size of actual (small) bricks, before "snake"n before displays were dot matrix even, just segmented alphanumeric. And it remains that way till this day. For all carriers. Text messaging is usable, voice calls work but barely, constant breakup and dropped calls are the normal experience. Depending on the time of year (whether the trees have leaves or not) you MAY get 1-5 mbit down on a speed test, but upload is laughable, you're lucky to get 0.1 mbit, most of the time, the upload portion of the test just fails outright. Pick literally any direction, although service in the whole neighborhood sucks, again, regardless of carrier, it's at least usable. Basically, their house is at the dead center of a true "dead zone" I'm sure the carriers are well aware of it, it's just not worth the effort or cost to do anything about it. We're talking 1-3 customers, if that, per carrier. Luckily, Wi-Fi calling is actually good these days, so their phones are usable. Tl,Dr; small dead zones exist, even in suburban areas. I'm sure the RF engineers are aware of them, it's just.not worth the logistics and expense of deploying a tower just to fix coverage for a grand total of like 5 customers.
That's a great video! Explained the basics for the final user in a simple and easy way! If you want to do more content related to telecom, let me know! I work for a big telecom company (not an operator) and maybe I can get you guys in touch with our office in Canada ;)
One thing I have read a number of times, is that these wi-fi 4 and 5 g towers are worth between $10,000 in rare metals and $100,000 on the black market. Here is my question, I can see people in the USA cutting those tower wi-fi units down. If they can catalytic converters out of cars, they will sure as hell cut down Wi-Fi 4g and 5g units for the metals. I started counting those towers and they often have 20 or more wi-fi broadcasters on a small tower. have you head of this being done - yet?
Can confirm. Used to build this equipment. Top antennas or "first carrier" are most commonly Verizon or AT&T. The tower usually is owned by Crown Castle, American Tower, or SBA in the United States and the carriers lease the space on the tower for their radios and/or antennas with additional equipment located down in the equipment hut. Third and fourth carriers were usually T-mobile and Sprint, with their merger usually leaving them in the third highest position on the towers. Contrary to popular belief, Verizon didn't have the most cutting edge technology in the industry. They used the oldest technology usually, but because their antennas were almost always first carrier, they had more antennas that were physically higher so their signal was less impeded by natural barriers like hills utilizing less sophisticated coaxial cables instead of fiber optics to dominate the cellular landscape up until the end of the 4G era. Now that 5G is becoming more popular, their strategy is less dominant, since, as Anthony pointed out, 5G signals do not carry as far because of the range of frequencies they utilize, so more frequent, but smaller sites are becoming the dominant source of cellular data transmission, such as ones mounted on top of city light poles, or sites leased from commercial buildings.
Also, worked a tower actually owned by US Cellular in the Chicago market. You never want to work on their actually owned towers if this one is any indication of the amount of attnetion they pay to the sites the actually own. The plant life overtaking the site was taller than I am by a couple of feet. We had to get a landscaping crew in there just to be able to climb the tower.
My only comment would be that each antenna is for a specific technology - 3G, 4G. So, typically there would be 1-2 antenna per sector per technology, which is why theres typically 3 or 4 antenna per sector.
I live in a small town where we have a cell tower nearby, our independent telco serves 5 communities with a population of less than 2500 in total, so it's doubtful they connect to another tower by wireline. 5G is great here but if you take the old highway, you get dropouts, or downgraded to 4G. Iowa's wonderful isn't it.. and the big 3 carriers are all terrible for best coverage from town to town, I have to pay about $30 more a month for a decent carrier.
before, sorry bad english In my town, there's many towers with tree design. I wonder, why some of these tower had a tree design, so 2 week ago i got a change to talk with an employee from a something called "communication department". And finally i know why these tower build in tree design. So, it's because: the internet profider want to build that tower in that location, but the "spacial department" or "land department" or whatever.. they didn't allow any steel structure or concrete building in that area, which meant that area is "green area". But, that department give the provider an option, that option is to build the tower with design that look like a tree, they called it "camouflage tower", and that's it! that's the reason why in my town or my country theres many tower with tree design,
A decade and a couple years ago, I was just off campus from my college smoking pot with some friends and I saw a plastic palm tree with 4g antennas on it. I proclaimed "that tree is f***ing fake!"
So how does my tiny little cell phone communicate with a cell tower miles away when my laptop can't even get wifi two rooms over from the router inside my house?
what happens to the radiation at the end of its range ? Does it drop to ground or dissipate ? Does the radiation concentrate where two ranges overlap ? Is c@ncer clusters worse nearest the tower of at the point of range overlap ?
I have a picture of a cell tower mounted on top of a palm tree with most of its leaves gone. I thought that was the funniest and clever way to set up a tower.
2:53 As far as I know, this is not true, towers work in different frequency ranges to avoid interference and to make reconnecting with different towers as smooth as possible. That is why phones have more antennas, second antenna is connected with different tower while first antenna is still connected as before and then, smooth transition is made.
Since 4G everything is on the same frequency. Using OFDM that frequency is shared among cells. To change from one cell to another you do a so called handover. And you are correct you want a bit of overlapping area so that there is enough time to get the handover done.
So microwave antennas are only really used on the west coast of the US. They aren't very common at all in the rest of the country. Most of the time, it's just cable being run from tower to tower. In neighborhoods and cities, we use "small cells" which are like those weird looking light poles. Surprisingly, small cells only handle a very small amount of users. but it's all pretty cool tech.
I work on cell towers. Done it for 15 years and it's nice to see just facts and not opinion when it comes to a very simplified version of what i do but you got the nail on the head great video
im a PM for a company that does both macro and small cell, i expected to have to correct a lot in this but it was so nice seeing someone finally just give actual facts about it all. the amount of karens that harass our small cell guys in the suburbs and dense multi-use areas is insane.
And I am the guy doing the whole backbone sht with the yellow cables and routers ^^
Thank you for your work, looks awesome!
I'm the one who connects my phone to the cell towers to watch TH-cam videos.
I'm the one that acquires the property rights for the mobile installations :)
Having worked for a mobile carrier since 2006... I love this video! Really accurate, and yup we use microwave for a lot of backhaul, esp in rural areas. It's also one of the biggest points of failure. You mention the antennas being angled downwards to reduce interference, but that's not totally correct... Carriers usually own a big chunk of spectrum, and we plan adjacent towers to run at different frequencies. They're typically angled downwards as the antenna are so directional, that if you don't angle them you end up with black spots directly under the tower... Some towers we can even change these angles remotely.
Always fun when you have to take a site down for maintenance and the switch calls you with the "Hey man, gonna need you to speed this one up. 12 other sites are down." God damn microwave sites.
ugh. I would be sorely tempted to respond with "yes, spending time listening to you complain is making it *massively* easier for me to get this thing back up and running ASAP."
@@alecmanning9177 what? Here in Europe we can’t take sites down. They only allow it under their schedule precisely to not (i have another 15 down), every time we have some maintenance or something we have to ask for a `ticket”, they then check their stuff like important site or important client near by, only then they send you a number/code which you have to give to the operator on the agreed day/hours, only then you can shut down.
how are they angled remotely?
@@epicgamer42069 cell antennas basically uses built in(newer antennas) or external(older antennas) attached motors/Remote Electrical Tilt(RET) to change the angle and tilt to optimize the signal.
I suddenly have a strong urge to climb one and reveal the local area map. Damn you, Ubisoft.
Bro here spitting fax 🗿
No seriously I have that urge too, Watch Dogs deviated us real good.
Me here wanna do a leap of faith. Damn you, Ubisoft.
But not that Cell Tower Cactus... It might be dangerous... But still I also need to climb a 4g tower.... 😅
or those huge antennas with the Crew
Damn Ubisoft.
I'm a city dweller so I haven't seen the cactus towers, but the tree towers are getting much better. They're actually passable for more than a glance while driving by at freeway speeds now.
We have a ton of church steeple / cross towers where I live.
I've seen the tree-towers as well. I have also seen church steeple-cell towers.
Fun fact, the industry refers to those as Monopines.
Meanwhile the bird sleeping in the fake tree streaming youtube through its brain.
They never fool me. I can spot a cell tower instantly. They look kind of cool, tbh.
Fun fact: my great-grandfather helped develop microwave transmission technology, specifically for television at the time. He was NOT happy to learn that it was going to be used for anything OTHER than educational programming! But his team's work helped bring us the greatest communications infrastructure that's ever existed. If only he had lived to see what good has come of it!
Lol. Your great-grandfather would have lived alongside Mussolini. He was either supremely naive or on the spectrum.
Wow! That is really cool! 😮
@@MandoMTL Would you like to add something of actual value to this conversation, or are you just here to sling pointless insults at a man who's been dead for decades?
@@JoshColletta 🤓
@@JoshColletta re: naive - trolls be trolling ... What you gonna do :-)
in addition to the cactus disguise, there are also monopole towers disguised as pine trees or palm trees. I always thought it was funny that many city-dwellers want good cell signal but can't bear to see an antenna or tower.
My favorites are the fake tree monopiles in winter! Such an interesting sight
Oh! The stories! Zoning meeting after zoning meeting, person after person with argument after argument about not wanting to see it from their house, then 6 months later calls to the carrier about why they have terrible reception at their dwelling. It never fails.
I'm a civil/structural engineer who specializes in the steel design of these towers. It's a pretty interesting, in-depth topic that a lot of people don't realize exists.
How stabile and strong are these towers, What is the highest you can build ?
@@XxGAMERxXPS3 They're pretty sturdy. Wind is the biggest design factor involved, and most commercial installations are designed for more antenna loading capscity than will ever actually be installed on them. Most antennas and equipment mounts will also fail before the towers do, so if a wind speed higher than the tower was designed for ever occurs, the antennas may fall off, but the towers are usually still standing without issues.
I guess they have foundation these towers right , Its just normal foundation nothing fancy. thank you so much for information and time, Also for all towers you helped with!
My favorite ones are the little poles with the 4 boxes and a tubular antenna on top. MM wave is awesome
I always get (overly) excited when seeing them even though they're operated by a carrier which I'm not subscribed to; my bucket list item is to run a speedtest on them!
I gotta disagree about mmWave. It makes no sense to me, because everything except it’s throughput is so poor
actually managed to speedtest and get around 3.5gbps down while in an intersection (someone else was drivng me somewhere), but i haven't seen the little box pole yet :
The main thing that was incorrect is the part about who was first on the tower is the highest. Its all about density, and of course not all cell sites(As towers are not the only way a Cell site can be deployed) need to be on the highest available height. There is alot of detail that is availble suce as what the Antenna(Or panels as most would say) look like, what the different shapes mean, what the boxes behind the antenna are(RRUs), etc. Its honestly kinda addicting getting to see a tower, and know which carrier is which, what spectrum is deployed based on the equipment, etc.
Also there are a whole can of worms when it comes to small cells, DAS systems, CoWs, COLTS, Blimps, drones, etc. AT&T actually has a blimp called Firstnet one. They also have drones to accompany it to disaster areas for quick cell service recovery while the macro is being restored.
Coolest looking towers are the old AT&T long lines microwave towers with the horn antennae. In rural areas, they’re these massive, imposing towers that can be seen for miles, and it’s fun when you get the right angle, and can see the next long lines tower the horn antennae are pointing at
Those are ugly af, thank God we got rid of them.
@@FinnishArmy Lies.
Love how the cosmopolitan multilingual foreigners are so flustered by inches and miles
I'm a dumb American and I figure out km all the time
40 miles is about 64km for those who couldn't be bothered to pause and look it up
America uses the metric system for $ 📐💰💵💸💵💸 for everything else America uses the English imperial system. $ 1billion, $1trillion,$1quadrillion,$1pentillion etcetera. We in holland unfortunately use the opposite, billion here is what you call $trillion or 1000 times a billion.
Dude, voice assistant, dude lazy people
Turned voice assistant off; it was being weird on this phone
@@mrkitty777 The names of large numbers has nothing to do with "metric" (SI) or "imperial" (US customary) measurements. English and most other languages use short-scale (prefix increments by powers of 1,000). Some languages mostly from Western and Central Europe use long-scale (prefix increments by powers of 1,000,000).
Also it's quintillion, not "pentillion".
@@VitalVampyr Wikipedia has a big page about it, but still metric system and imperial system are responsible for disasters when conversion happens.
As a Dutchie who works as a tower climber I'm always amazed by just how different the towers look across the Atlantic. Way bulkier and technically completely different. Here you'll usually have a tower (usually either by VDL or Kaal) and each provider that's in there only has three antennas. Sometimes an operator adds another but that's to boost a certain frequency for example or as an added upgrade. Feeders and combiners are starting to become a thing of the past as more and more sites have their radios up in the tower as well. Mechanical down tilt is used sparsely as it can be done electrically for up to 6 degrees with the vendor were working with. Also no concrete building to put the hardware in, just cabinets on a steel frame and a fence. Roof-top sites are always completely different and depending on the roof.
But I guess the main difference is that the operators don't actually own the towers over here. Only the temporary structures and usually not even those are owned by the operator but owned by the contractor who builds them. Back in 2007 KPN, one of the major operators here, owned most of the towers but because of the monopoly that was arising it was forced to sell all of them by the competition authority. Now you have companies owning towers but not doing anything with telecom and you have actual operators. Works quite good. All three operators are in a trade association as well, making guidelines to make work in towers and on roof-tops a lot safer. A lot can be said about the Dutch telecom-sector but it is actually very well organized.
I live on Birmingham, Alabama. And I saw a cell tower designed to look like a pine tree. It was hilarious!
Those are becoming more and more common across the country. They are basically everywhere now.
In Lincoln Nebraska at a fire station, they have a cell tower disguised as a flag pole, With a flag flying!
They call them "Monopines". The ones disguised as palm trees, which obviously are more common in places like California and Florida are called "Monopalms".
Had to rescue a guy off a monopine once. The branches are basically made of fiberglass with a steel support rod that stands out from the tower about 18 inches from the tower that the "tree branch" fits onto. If you step on the branch for support further out than 18 inches, your weight is essentially only being supported by fiberglass, and the branch will break off and you'll come swinging into the tower with enough force to knock your a$$ out. A climber I was with did just that an we had to take him to the hospital while he was basically out cold from impacting the tower.
Birmingham in the states?
Do you have a London as well?
What's funny is that there's a building here in Nashville TN that is called the Batman building that's mostly filled with AT&T... Except it's definitely more reminiscent of the tower of sauron according to some photo editors lol. Look it up, it's hilarious. Your Sauron eye edit reminded me of it
This one?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Building_%28Nashville%29?wprov=sfla1
Thanks. Had a nice time with friends about this thanks to you.
@@goffryboss glad to give people a giggle
wow, 100
Nananana-nana-nana, Sauron!
Here in Utah you can sometimes see these flat white panels up on mountains to reflect microwave backhaul around terrain that's in the way
It's also why one backcountry ski run has the name Microwave 😂
Even since I got covid vaccine, my 4g phone is connected to 5g network...
just kidding.
Funny how I click this video, it starts and data breaks down on my phone... Almost as if my cell company doesn't want me to know how their towers work.
You forgot to include distance value in metric
I love videos like that where I learn something new about something I see all the time but don't think about. Thanks!
1:04 I'm amazed by the advances in stock footage technology.
40 miles == 64 km
6 miles == 9.6 km
The signal is transmitted in a shape more like a hemp leaf or maple leaf from sector antennas.
Not a suggestion per say, but it would be nice if you would write the units in international recognized kilometers as well miles O.o
Thanks 🙏
100% agree with this surely their audience is not USA exclusive
They're Canadian too which makes it even worse.
@@MandoMTL I'm American and I still think this
Weird of Canadians to be this insensitive.
I work for a canadian cell phone company and even in the software of towers distance are in miles.
And we pay our equipment in USD.
There's a huge ugly concrete building in the centre of my home town, used to house a massive grain silo but has been disused for decades, only reason it still exists is that all the telephone companies bolted their transmitters to the top of it
Good way to collect rent from them.
They are directed down to avoid black spots just near the tower(the tilt is mostly controlled remotely from a NOC (network operation center)). The interference is avoided by doing cell planning in a way that no adjacent frequencies are same(Also called frequency reuse). Also as other carriers have different frequencies so interference is completely avoided. Lower the frequency, higher the coverage area and higher the frequency, lower the coverage area. Also 5G cell areas are smaller than 4G and 4G is smaller than 3G and 3G is smaller than 2G due to the fact that higher bandwidth requirement shrinks the coverage area. There is a phenomenon called cell breathing. More people and bandwidth being used in a cell area reduced the coverage. This is especially an issue for people living at the edge of cell areas as their phone is constantly switching between cell sites. These are the places where the telcos put micro sites. Also carriers using lower frequency will have indoor coverage area issues and carriers using higher frequencies will have better indoor coverage. But carriers like low frequencies as it reduces the number of cells required due to higher coverage of lower frequencies.
3:12 of course there are only miles. Thanks Jon, Linus, Marcus and Alexandre for missing out International System of Units
Yeah, it's sad when they don't think of the rest of the world
They go out of their way too, seeing as they're Canadian.
I prefer to measure distance in igloos stacked sideways. Just as stupid as imperial.
Yeah, i had the same reflexion. Canadian not using metric unit... i downvoted the video for that. Serioulsy in 2022 using the imperial system ONLY is just plain stupid. They should only use the metric system, or if they really want to help the american add the imperial too, but ALWAYS metric first and imperial second.
Why do you care? The imperial system more closely reflects units of measurement based off of a comparison to parts of the human body, meaning that you ALWAYS have the measurement tool with you.
Standard measurements are far easier to convert into larger and smaller units, making the transportability of the same information easier.
Both modes are useful units of measurement, and both should be commonly understood.
In Europe companies are forced to share to avoid unnecessary towers.
Tilting the antenna can not only be done mechanically, but also remotely via electrical polarisation. My job is to manage the tilts to get the most performance and coverage by balancing the load between cell towers!
As somebody who works in Microwave networking, thank you for not leaving us out. SO many things use microwave backhaul and yet it is still such a tiny industry compared to any other type of networking.
I love staring at radio towers, now I know the differences between the towers and what the different antennas mean. I’ve also never seen a cactus tower.
The three panel antennas per side isn't really to cover 40 degrees each: they each do 120 degrees, but some panels are designed for different frequency bands (for the same carrier), and even different frequencies within the same band to be able to communicate with multiple devices at once.
Plus space diversity for the receivers.
3:13 40 miles = 64.37 kilometers
People talking about the video as if it were 100% on point. I on the otherhand think that most reasoning for cell towers using three sectors, the reason for the tilt and the reach is actually either only secondary or wrong. The use of different frequency, spacial reuse and load balancing is far more important.
Please also add metric system distances. In Europe we don't use hamburgers, donuts or feet for measuring.... Thank you.
You don’t use google either apparently.
Please tell us the distances also in metric. I hate when I have to open a washing machine calculator.
Here in Australia it’s common to have towers as large as 100 metres or more (330 feet) in rural areas and those might be on the tallest hill as well further increasing their distance above sea level. In our cities though, rooftop and light pole towers are common, in suburban areas it’s common to put them on top of or behind a shopping centre (mall) or petrol (gas) station. That gives the indoor coverage needed to businesses in the area while also providing coverage to homes nearby
I saw a cell tower decerated like a tree once 😂it was a tall tree 😂😂😂
In some parts of California, we have very realistic looking palm tree towers. First time I saw one I had to do a double take because something just didn't seem right.
Saw a real looking palm tree cell tower in Fremont, CA about a week and a half ago. Pretty cool. Got a picture of it too.
It's usually the trunk; it's too 'perfect.' But they're definitely getting better and the palm tree ones are usually the best. That said, while I've never seen one, those cactus ones would totally get me.
Been working on cell towers for several years. pretty informative vid. spot on with the information. good shit
i woke up this morning wondering how do these towers get signal and hey techquickie just dropped a video to my question
Love how it started.
"Obviously"
Reminded me of that Spanish movie "The platform"
This City dweller has never seen a cell tower disguised as a cactus. 😿Then again, I live in NYC where the only times I see an actual cactus is when I go to Home depot or even the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
0:09 One tower to rule them all, One tower to find them, One tower to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. 😂😂
∞ G Tower
😱😱😱
Linus should do a video climbing a Cell Tower!!
BREAKING NEWS: a famous youtuber Linus Sebastian was arrested due to cell tower sabotage, he claims he accidentally dropped the antenna that hit the security guard to death
We need more Anthony!! I could fall asleep to that soothing voice.
My house is literally a dead zone, it’s so fun, end of Driveway: fine, end of back yard: fine
My parents house is the same, has been that way since long as I can remember, back to the mid 90s, when cellular phones were the size of actual (small) bricks, before "snake"n before displays were dot matrix even, just segmented alphanumeric.
And it remains that way till this day. For all carriers. Text messaging is usable, voice calls work but barely, constant breakup and dropped calls are the normal experience. Depending on the time of year (whether the trees have leaves or not) you MAY get 1-5 mbit down on a speed test, but upload is laughable, you're lucky to get 0.1 mbit, most of the time, the upload portion of the test just fails outright.
Pick literally any direction, although service in the whole neighborhood sucks, again, regardless of carrier, it's at least usable. Basically, their house is at the dead center of a true "dead zone"
I'm sure the carriers are well aware of it, it's just not worth the effort or cost to do anything about it. We're talking 1-3 customers, if that, per carrier.
Luckily, Wi-Fi calling is actually good these days, so their phones are usable.
Tl,Dr; small dead zones exist, even in suburban areas. I'm sure the RF engineers are aware of them, it's just.not worth the logistics and expense of deploying a tower just to fix coverage for a grand total of like 5 customers.
@@matt697845 yeah literally all my neighbors have great cell service, it’s just my small plot doesn’t get anything 😂
You never got into Micro Cell towers. A lot of our telephone poles have itty bitty micro cells to improve reception and boost speed
They're also in lots of buildings and stadiums, shopping centres etc etc
cactus: wanna chill?
tower: dude I'm working
I can drive a few miles into a dead zone somehow, yet NASA can get 160bytes/second from Voyager 1, 23.38 BILLION KM AWAY.
As a tower climber, love this video. Great job!
2G had the widest range. Hope 6G improves range also with speed.
Sadly it's kinda how it is.
The higher your carrier frequency, the less range you have, but more data you can shove in the signal.
bruh 6g is very far away
Higher frequency = more energy loss = more power needed for the same range = unhealthy, interfering, unfeasible
not sure that's true - 4G can use same frequencies as 2G so range can be the same. You pay with lower speed (as lower frequency)
Well actually 2G (GSM) has a theoretical range of 35km while LTE allows with its timing advance mechanism a maximum range of 100km.
In the Midwest we get fake tree cell towers to blend in with all the other trees.....
That's a great video! Explained the basics for the final user in a simple and easy way! If you want to do more content related to telecom, let me know! I work for a big telecom company (not an operator) and maybe I can get you guys in touch with our office in Canada ;)
The best is when your driving in the dead of winter and there’s one cell tower painted brown and has fake tree limbs on it
I visited Mesa, Arizona and basically every tower was a fake palm tree.
One thing I have read a number of times, is that these wi-fi 4 and 5 g towers are worth between $10,000 in rare metals and $100,000 on the black market. Here is my question, I can see people in the USA cutting those tower wi-fi units down. If they can catalytic converters out of cars, they will sure as hell cut down Wi-Fi 4g and 5g units for the metals. I started counting those towers and they often have 20 or more wi-fi broadcasters on a small tower. have you head of this being done - yet?
Where are you going to cash it in?
Because I guarantee any place you take that will just call the cops..
How will you take down the tower before the NOC employees notice that the tower is down and sent someone to fix it.
1:46 4G or 5G 😂😂
* Laughs in german 2G internet *
Good video this was definitely needed. Just answered a few of my questions actually.
Can confirm. Used to build this equipment.
Top antennas or "first carrier" are most commonly Verizon or AT&T. The tower usually is owned by Crown Castle, American Tower, or SBA in the United States and the carriers lease the space on the tower for their radios and/or antennas with additional equipment located down in the equipment hut.
Third and fourth carriers were usually T-mobile and Sprint, with their merger usually leaving them in the third highest position on the towers.
Contrary to popular belief, Verizon didn't have the most cutting edge technology in the industry. They used the oldest technology usually, but because their antennas were almost always first carrier, they had more antennas that were physically higher so their signal was less impeded by natural barriers like hills utilizing less sophisticated coaxial cables instead of fiber optics to dominate the cellular landscape up until the end of the 4G era.
Now that 5G is becoming more popular, their strategy is less dominant, since, as Anthony pointed out, 5G signals do not carry as far because of the range of frequencies they utilize, so more frequent, but smaller sites are becoming the dominant source of cellular data transmission, such as ones mounted on top of city light poles, or sites leased from commercial buildings.
Also, worked a tower actually owned by US Cellular in the Chicago market. You never want to work on their actually owned towers if this one is any indication of the amount of attnetion they pay to the sites the actually own. The plant life overtaking the site was taller than I am by a couple of feet. We had to get a landscaping crew in there just to be able to climb the tower.
My only comment would be that each antenna is for a specific technology - 3G, 4G. So, typically there would be 1-2 antenna per sector per technology, which is why theres typically 3 or 4 antenna per sector.
I live near Philly and they decorate the tops of cell towers to look like trees lol
Towers look funny because of the stealth field they emit around the UFO parked at the top.
love you guys, subscribed...
I can see my cellular antennas attached to the water tower a block from my house.
every time i pass the cell tower i start laughing
Cell phone infrastructure disguised as palm trees or pine trees? Sounds like something Dr. Robotnik would do.
I live in a small town where we have a cell tower nearby, our independent telco serves 5 communities with a population of less than 2500 in total, so it's doubtful they connect to another tower by wireline. 5G is great here but if you take the old highway, you get dropouts, or downgraded to 4G. Iowa's wonderful isn't it.. and the big 3 carriers are all terrible for best coverage from town to town, I have to pay about $30 more a month for a decent carrier.
I'm really glad that most cell tower antennas are BIG ENOUGH.
My old neighborhood has a face tree cell phone tower as well as surrounding areas with flagpole towers and even a church cross
and this kid is why having an antenna on your roof don't radiate the wave, even with non directional antenna but one that goes 360°
Miles? Whats that? Pls in Hotdogs
Can you do a video about 3G and 4G cell towers and coverage??
before, sorry bad english
In my town, there's many towers with tree design. I wonder, why some of these tower had a tree design, so 2 week ago i got a change to talk with an employee from a something called "communication department". And finally i know why these tower build in tree design.
So, it's because: the internet profider want to build that tower in that location, but the "spacial department" or "land department" or whatever.. they didn't allow any steel structure or concrete building in that area, which meant that area is "green area".
But, that department give the provider an option, that option is to build the tower with design that look like a tree, they called it "camouflage tower", and that's it! that's the reason why in my town or my country theres many tower with tree design,
Right out my houses backyard is a highrise with a bunch on top, my reception is legendary.
A decade and a couple years ago, I was just off campus from my college smoking pot with some friends and I saw a plastic palm tree with 4g antennas on it. I proclaimed "that tree is f***ing fake!"
I need to know where to find that sick sweatshirt!
So how does my tiny little cell phone communicate with a cell tower miles away when my laptop can't even get wifi two rooms over from the router inside my house?
I love in the Midwest and would kill for a Cellular Caci Tower to be put up downtown.
this was cooler than i thought it would be
My local cell tower looks like a baby high chair
what happens to the radiation at the end of its range ? Does it drop to ground or dissipate ? Does the radiation concentrate where two ranges overlap ?
Is c@ncer clusters worse nearest the tower of at the point of range overlap ?
I like this guy in particular.
That's a God-tier thumbnail. I clicked on this video just to say that.
I have a picture of a cell tower mounted on top of a palm tree with most of its leaves gone. I thought that was the funniest and clever way to set up a tower.
2:53 As far as I know, this is not true, towers work in different frequency ranges to avoid interference and to make reconnecting with different towers as smooth as possible. That is why phones have more antennas, second antenna is connected with different tower while first antenna is still connected as before and then, smooth transition is made.
Since 4G everything is on the same frequency. Using OFDM that frequency is shared among cells. To change from one cell to another you do a so called handover. And you are correct you want a bit of overlapping area so that there is enough time to get the handover done.
Isn't that CA?
Dislike? How can you ever dislike a video with Anthony in it?
Can I microwave popcorn with those microwave transmitters on those towers?
microwave ovens run at 2.450ghz
@@gamecubeplayer so, I can?
@@CoasterMan13Official gain or amplitude or magnitude is too low. You need more PAWA.
@@CoasterMan13Official cell towers don't run at 2.4ghz
@@gamecubeplayer so, no.
Companies out here making space needles everywhere
So microwave antennas are only really used on the west coast of the US. They aren't very common at all in the rest of the country. Most of the time, it's just cable being run from tower to tower. In neighborhoods and cities, we use "small cells" which are like those weird looking light poles. Surprisingly, small cells only handle a very small amount of users. but it's all pretty cool tech.
Fake cell tower cactus ... it's a beautiful thing **teary eyed**
Watching this video as I sit stuck in traffic, starting at a cell tower.
Thanks for the video!
You can't show me this fake cell tower cactus and leave me hanging what the hell?!
Lol
You missed a double pun at the beginning. One tower to rule them all.
They looking like the towers in half life 2
2:25 Pretty sure this is not 40 degrees each, but antennas on different frequencies (all covering 120 degrees)
Two things I learned today: bottom bunk is better, and cell towers come in cactus form
And that drum in front of those microwave antennas are to keep ice and dust to stick and on them blocking the signal.
very good info thanks