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I'm still baffled that I get better service in the middle of a lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness than on the shore. I tried T-Mobile for service

by joshmn 4y ago

I'm still baffled that I get better service in the middle of a lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness than on the shore. I tried T-Mobile for service, I tried Verizon, and I tried AT&T, and for whatever reason, I could run a decent speed test in the middle of many lakes, but not anywhere else.

extheat 4y ago
Less network congestion probably? Maybe something in the area is causing interference on the mobile frequencies.
kortex 4y ago
Fresnel zones are weird. Radio waves don't always behave like line-of-sight would suggest. So out on the water, you might be farther from the tower as the crow flies, but there may be less interference, obstruction, multipath error, etc.
- elihu 4y ago
  Also, water specifically has good propagation characteristics. (Salt water is best, iirc.) At least, I think that's true for the longer wavelengths more typically used with HAM radio. I don't know if it holds for microwave-ish frequencies like cell phones would use.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    Interestingly the ARRL distance records have several "rain scatter" propagation entries at higher frequencies... https://www.arrl.org/distance-records https://www.arrl.org/distance-records
  - Thlom 4y ago
    Back in the day when we had a VHF/UHF TV antenna on the side of the house I noticed the quality varied with the tide. Our house were 15 meters or so above sea level and the TV tower were on the other side of the fjord. Some channels we could only watch during high tide.
JamisonM 4y ago
The network techs at my telco tell me that Cell towers hate trees and that is why I have no service at my home except intermittently on the second floor since I live along a well-treed river at the edge of a coverage area. It makes some sense to me, just as antenna folks jokingly call humans bags of water trees are ... bags of water with infinity tiny appendages that are constantly in motion in the slightest breeze.

by joshmn 4y ago

extheat 4y ago

Less network congestion probably? Maybe something in the area is causing interference on the mobile frequencies.

kortex 4y ago

Fresnel zones are weird. Radio waves don't always behave like line-of-sight would suggest. So out on the water, you might be farther from the tower as the crow flies, but there may be less interference, obstruction, multipath error, etc.

elihu 4y ago
Also, water specifically has good propagation characteristics. (Salt water is best, iirc.) At least, I think that's true for the longer wavelengths more typically used with HAM radio. I don't know if it holds for microwave-ish frequencies like cell phones would use.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  Interestingly the ARRL distance records have several "rain scatter" propagation entries at higher frequencies... https://www.arrl.org/distance-records https://www.arrl.org/distance-records
- Thlom 4y ago
  Back in the day when we had a VHF/UHF TV antenna on the side of the house I noticed the quality varied with the tide. Our house were 15 meters or so above sea level and the TV tower were on the other side of the fjord. Some channels we could only watch during high tide.

JamisonM 4y ago

The network techs at my telco tell me that Cell towers hate trees and that is why I have no service at my home except intermittently on the second floor since I live along a well-treed river at the edge of a coverage area. It makes some sense to me, just as antenna folks jokingly call humans bags of water trees are ... bags of water with infinity tiny appendages that are constantly in motion in the slightest breeze.