How is it possible for multiple cellular carriers to broadcast from one tower?
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A tower is just a high place to put transmitting/receiving equipment, it can have a TON of hardware up there for different communications bands, directional signals, etc….
To the more important part: Your carrier does not necessarily have to own the hardware your cell phone is using. It can use anything that allows its traffic as long as the hardware is communicating in a compatible frequency band and protocol. Part of what it communicates is who you are and who your carrier is, that’s the most critical thing the SIM card provides. If it uses hardware that doesn’t belong to your carrier (assuming that’s allowed by the network you’re communicating with), then the network owner bills that back to your carrier, who in turn assigns that usage to your account and bills you accordingly. Not every carrier automatically has these agreements, but most of them do. That’s how small/budget cell providers work. While and AT&T or a Verizon may have a lot of their own network, Cricket and whatever are just using the big companies networks and paying for that access.
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