Forum Discussion
Lock onto a single tower or boost signal?
Is there a way to lock onto a tower and not have it hop around, or any other methods to pull a signal from a specific tower? I have 2 towers close to me, and my tmo home internet bounces between th...
Locked on n41 is more important than B66 on LTE.
n41 (depending on the local area capacity) can give you +500Mbps alone. B2/B66 ~=100Mbps maybe (15x15 to 20x20). The problem typically is with n41 upload. I.e. In ideal instances, I'll get 450/60Mbps (day and night) with slider open to screen. Close the door, and it drops to 400/30. Move it further indoors, and its ~300/10. When it does switch from n41 to n71, then upload shoots up, and I'm closer to 250-300/70.
n41 has a lot of capacity 'in general', but is doesn't go through walls/windows/trees very well. Similarly, n41 is using TDD to slice up its +100MHz of spectrum, and allocating most 'time' to download.
n71 (and LTE B66/B2) are FDD giving equal time (different slice used upload vs download) , and will typically have higher upload.
Speak to TMHI and ‘request’ that the set your SIM in your device to ‘prefer’ the one site that’s closest.
I would say that it depends on using the placement tool, and results. I.e. If you have 2 towers ≈ same distance, one is east, one is west, I'd recommend moving your device to the western side and test (if you know where it is 'exactly', you can tune this). Similarly, if you have an Android device and can install cellmapper.net, you can 3d output the path to the tower itself (it draws a line)
Try for the line with the least interference (trees, buildings, etc), and similarly place the device in a location with a window vs wall (makes a difference), and rotate the TMHI device (it is directional - 180 degrees goes from 2 bars to 4 bars).
Try this for both towers to see what works best. Until T-Mobile deployed 5G on the local tower, I was better off using 5G from the tower +1 mile away vs 4G LTE on the tower 1200' away.
In theory, T-Mobile can ‘lock’ you onto a tower, so you’d probably have to ask them.
