Forum Discussion
Tower upgrades taking weeks to complete?
I started having issues a couple of days ago and when I called they stated that the towers in my area are being upgraded. I asked how long this would take as I had no service for several days. They s...
When T-Mobile engineers state a tower is being upgraded it really is a vague statement. They might be upgrading older gear with new 5G technology but this really does not define how much work is being done. If they have a plan for multiple cells for coverage in different areas it could take a bit longer for the stated "upgrade". When the 5G was deployed here it was done with n71 in our area. Recently the coverage just changed and a n41 signal appeared. Then the next day it was gone. Then several days later tada the n41 signal returned. It was a total surprise that this rural area went from n71 to n41. It is hard to say how long an upgrade may take. For the Charlotte area by the airport it might be a bit more involved. The longer n71 frequency has more distance and better penetration than the n41 millimeter frequency but does not have the speed capability. I have seen the RSRP, signal strength with the n41 quite a bit less than the n71 frequency BUT the RSRQ and SINR improved and I have seen some impressive speed results. The bandwidth here pretty much doubled even with the lesser signal strength. So it comes down to signal quality and less noise is really important for performance. If the signal is clean they there are fewer damaged packets and fewer retransmissions so performance is better.
A tower upgrade may improve service even if you don't see a stronger signal. If you see a cleaner better quality of signal that will most likely improve matters. As long as the signal penetrates the building and environment sufficiently to provide a good or excellent signal quality things should improve. OK so that also will be dependent upon the routing paths upstream as well. Every environment is a little different.
I was a bit skeptical about the n41 upgrade here since I have seen numerous conversations where tower upgrades started out great only to go very bad. So far things have gone well but a rural vs urban solution are two different animals. There are more variables to consider in a highly populous area.
