Like those dead spots where if you drive another 100 yards in any direction you have plenty of reception/signal strength. What causes these type of dead spots?
In: 0
There can be a lot of reasons, but here are two of the big ones.
First, interference from other sources of radio “noise”.
The signal may seem weak but actually be strong but nearby interference makes it only just strong enough to be heard. You won’t hear the noise because cell phones are digital and thus you only hear things your cell phone decodes to sound and not noise that decodes to nothing. This is why in the old days you heard static, but today you hear a lot of blank spaces. The static became too loud, so the software had to drop the signal entirely.
Second, cell phone towers can interfere with each other, creating areas where signals are stronger or weaker.
For example, two towers 1 mile apart may be set up so that their signals reinforce each other on a perpendicular to the line between them. If they are set on both sides of a valley, there is now a strip running down the valley a mile wide where they are amplified, improving the signal in the valley.
Unfortunately, to make the signal stronger in one place it has to be made weaker in others. Too bad you aren’t in the valley.
Third, reflections. A reflection may scramble a signal.
When your phone picks up the scrambled signal and the more direct good signal, the scrambled signal acts like static. See my first answer.
Fourth, reflections can interfere just like another tower.
The original signal and the reflection may work together in some places and against each other in others, just as in my second answer above. If someone raises a building after the cell towers are placed this could happen even when the cell phone company took pains to avoid it.
Fifth, buildings, power lines, hills, and other tall things can create “shadows” where the signals are blocked.
Building mobile networks costs money. Coverage is always related to population / revenue. Sometimes it’s not worth covering everywhere. Other time the radio planning gets it wrong.
Latest Answers