topic No bars but close to mast. in Archived Posts

No bars but close to mast.

CyberModz — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 09:22:39 GMT

Hello, I am having an issue with a mast near me that is giving me -120dbm and no bars yet it is just across the road about less a mile and my calls are suffering. I can force band 7 on another mast for the speed but this does not support calls as I get no VoLTE. I put a report into ee and they found an issue and fixed it. However, this has still not fixed it. This is very disappointing as calls are robotic sounding at times. Any way ee can boost power of mast or add more cells that cover my house. I pay a lot for my plan and not getting consistent performance. I cam attach picture of the site and how close it is with my signal or any other Info to help fix this. Any tech savvy can help with the numbers from the site like dbm and stuff from cellmapper.

Thanks

Re: No bars but close to mast.

mikeliuk — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 10:24:40 GMT

Hi @CyberModz ,

Do friends and family report that your voice is robotic in calls or is it that other people sound robotic on calls?

Does this even happen when you converse with someone on a known-good VoLTE connection?

Does the problem persist if you move to a location where you happen to get a VoLTE connection yourself? (E.g. in a town centre.)

Re: No bars but close to mast.

bristolian — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 10:27:45 GMT

Hi @CyberModz

Has your service always been this way since the site was there? And do other EE phones in your same location have similar issues?

-120dBM is on the limit of usable coverage, which would potentially explain your poor service - depending on your other signal parameters (RSRQ & SNR)

You've mentioned that your device isn't VoLTE compatible, and that's potentially part of the issue here.

What does the coverage checker report for your location, and does it make any reference to "4G-calling devices"? I'm trying to establish if the site you're seeing, is a live EE network site.

There may be some other parameters that are worth checking, but it's always worth going for the basic checks first, before going into more detail.

Re: No bars but close to mast.

CyberModz — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 11:14:37 GMT

Hello, thanks for the fast reply @bristolian @mikeliuk. My device is VoLTE capable and enabled. I was referring to another tower as this is giving me better speeds that's why I force a band 7 on another tower. However, the issue is that is literally less than a mile away on the other side of the road near me. My family has this issue with calls sounding robotic sometimes or when ringing someone else they can not hear us sometimes as we get 0 bars. I moved to EE about 2 months ago, been with three their calls were fine but slow speeds. I will give as much info as I can see in this app for the RSRQ and others such as cell id to see if this is useful. However, the coverage checker reports a good signal indoors and out.

Cell tower Info,

Cell ID: Think this is it eNB 34757 however another app is saying 26857 so any of these i think don't really know this using cellmapper mainly.

RSRP: -120

RSRQ: -13

RSSNR: 0.0 dB

SNR can't seem to find sorry that's all that's there mostly.

Anyways hope this was helpful, EE is rolling out 5g in my area and maybe this will fix slow or week 4g in the progress. However, it is yet to reach me. Keep praying as this is annoying me sometimes have to wifi call or messenger. 😞

Re: No bars but close to mast.

bristolian — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 12:10:11 GMT

All of the eNB you have identified are in a similar area of Manchester, but sometimes the simple solutions are the best ones, and in this case...

What makes you sure that the site you're not connecting to, is a working EE one? What does the coverage checker I previously linked to, report - have you used the "check outages" link as well? Do other EE users in the same location have similar problems?

Re: No bars but close to mast.

mikeliuk — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 12:47:41 GMT

Hi @CyberModz ,

It does seem like the issue is on your end and and I typically concentrate on the RSSNR parameter. Typically I find 5 dB or better is usable but worse than 3 dB is pretty bad. I aim for better than 13 dB to hit 81 Mbps and sub-30 ms latency.

Perhaps airplane off and on in various locations in your property, possibly in different devices, could get a good signal suitable for VoLTE and you work from there.

From a practical perspective, a temporary workaround may be to use WhatsApp or another data app to make calls as you fix your VoLTE and call quality issue. This is what I do with another service provider where I don't have access to VoLTE (as the device is not supported for VoLTE on that network) but bandwidth is ok. I previously used WiFi but decided to cut out that hop as both home WiFi and the mobile used 4G LTE.

Apparently 64 Kbps is all you need for a WhatsApp call. I suspect you would have mentioned if your bandwidth were worse than that! https://www.quora.com/How-much-bandwidth-Kbps-does-a-WhatsApp-call-require

The best play is probably not to force Band 7 until you have a good handle on the VoLTE issue as you may be sometimes preventing selection of a cell that would be ok for VoLTE even if bandwidth is a little worse.

https://usatcorp.com/faqs/understanding-lte-signal-strength-values/

Re: No bars but close to mast.

bristolian — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 12:28:08 GMT

@mikeliuk wrote:

From a practical perspective, a temporary workaround may be to use WhatsApp or another data app to make calls as you fix your VoLTE and call quality issue.

https://usatcorp.com/faqs/understanding-lte-signal-strength-values/

....which will make no difference if the OP's underlying issue is poor coverage.

That same poor coverage won't change, depending on whether it's being used for voice or data!! If there is reliable WiFi/broadband at this location, then just enabling WiFi-calling is the next obvious step.

By means of answering the query as to why this closeby mast isn't providing signal, I'm curious as to what leads @CyberModz to think this is a live EE site.

Re: No bars but close to mast.

CyberModz — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 12:58:52 GMT

Thanks for this reply @bristolian @mikeliuk, I am not sure by what you mean by live EE site I use cellmapper and it shows that I am connected to this cell tower. My VoLTE works fine and can connect to other masts great just this one it acting up. Already put a claim to the network engineers on the check network status. However, after the works had been done I restarted my phone and still had issues. How can I check if this site is live? The network coverage checker says "You'll get excellent coverage indoors and outdoors on your Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G."

Can"t rely on wifi calling as my internet is not the best as it is ADSL and very slow. This is why I use a lot of EE data to hotspot and download but this is very difficult as the mast is not giving me a decent signal saying that it is less than a mile away.

Also, there is another user on EE in the same house having to wait to load anything as it's very slow and intermittent calls like the person on the other end hard to hear us on this end. However, what makes it all weird is that the only way to get some bars is to move off my street as if my street get sub-optimal coverage and lack of fibre makes this painful day to day.

If there is anything more to add numbers-wise or area to rule out if the mast is working as intended that will be great.

Again, thanks for this.

Re: No bars but close to mast.

bristolian — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 13:16:24 GMT

This post was started querying why you're not getting signal when you're next to a particular mast. I'm just querying why you're so sure you should be getting service from it - how do you know it's an EE mast and is active?

Have you used the coverage tool - bearing in mind it has 2 functions.

1: " Check coverage" predicts the service in the chosen location.

2: "Check outages" checks for known faults & issues in that location.

Have you used the faults & issues lookup?

All the eNB checks so far are proving, is what you are connected to. There's no straightforward way of any app telling you why you're not connected to a site that you think you should be.

Re: No bars but close to mast.

CyberModz — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 17:33:41 GMT

Thanks, @bristolian for this information. The mast in question has been there years and I always connect to it when I get closer the signal goes up so certain it's it, as there are no masts near it in the area for any carrier. The coverage checker says all is normal and can get a good signal, however, I am not getting a good signal. However, the network status checker says "Our engineers have fixed a problem here. It should all be working again now. If you're still experiencing problems, let us know." This is after I reported the issue but seems to fix nothing. Never had an issue with EE elsewhere except this mast. I don't know a lot about masts but this one seems low-powered or something as it does not give me great signal. When EE comes to do 5g near me soon will they upgrade 4g problems like this? Any way to check if a cell tower is active? I am for sure on this slow tower. Sorry for the frustration just cant seem to find a reason why a close tower is so bad.

Thanks,

Re: No bars but close to mast.

bristolian — Sun, 22 Aug 2021 18:05:04 GMT

The only way of progressing this will be to specifically identify the network site (mast) in question, something which would require the location - I'd recommend calling EE C/S and, most likely, speaking to a second-line tech agent.

These agents have a few more diagnostic tools, and can carry out a few further checks.

5G rollout is a complex area, but it's possible that a fault-fix on existing equipment and the install of new kit, is a related activity - depending where any fault is.

Re: No bars but close to mast.

CyberModz — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 11:50:27 GMT

Thanks for this reply @bristolian. Sorry for this late reply I can use my phone's built-in service mode to find the correct numbers. I spoke with tech support on live chat and they just said that the signal is great and used the signal checker. However, this is not great on my street. Anyways here is all the information that I could not provide before as the app I used did not have it, so I am using Samsung's built-in service mode to find these. Also, I am positive that this is the mast near me as I looked on mast data and there are 2 recorded one for installation in 2018 and one for an upgrade.

ServingCellID: 0x68E902 PCI:413

RSRP: -125

RSRQ: -17

RSSI: -86

TAC: 11372

SINR: -17

Hope this is useful, do these numbers look good?

Thanks,

Re: No bars but close to mast.

bristolian — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 12:20:31 GMT

The serving cell should be entirely a numerical format, usually 5 digits.

Either way, as I mentioned previously, an app is not going to easily tell you why you're not connecting to any particular site. It just tells you the radio parameters of the cell you are connected to.

Re: No bars but close to mast.

CyberModz — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 12:36:00 GMT

Thanks, @bristolian for this reply. I thought that those numbers look bad for signal. However, the site I am connected to only has one mast shared by ee and three. There is a planning submission on Bolton council for a new mast opposite this one. This one is a phase 7 4g and 5g mast for both EE and three. This planning form for the new mast has been accepted on 12 of November 2020. How long does it take to go from planning accepted to installation? Currently, my signal is 0 bars and keeps going to 3g 2 bars. Is the signal number in my last post good for a mast that's 300 meters away? Also, will it pick up a EE 5G/4G signal 300 meters away?

Thanks, sorry for asking a lot of questions just wanting to know.

Re: No bars but close to mast.

bristolian — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 13:15:55 GMT

Timescales from planning to installation & subsequent go-live is, literally, "how long is a piece of string", there's just so many variables involved. I've known it take a matter of weeks, I've known it take several years.

Signal levels, again without knowing local physical conditions it would be unusual for RSRP values to drop much below -100dBM when you're close to the antenna. The higher the numerical value, the lower the actual value and the worse the radio conditions.

Re: No bars but close to mast.

EssexBoyEE — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 14:14:17 GMT

As a very rough guide for 4 and 5G Signals when your standing almost next to the Mast would be around -50 to -60 for RSSI and around

-70 to -80 for RSRP these figures represent extremely good Signal Levels.

Ideally you need to be about 50 meters away from the Mast rather than almost under it, as the Antennas can be quiet directional especially if very high up on the Mast, for good Data Speeds again around 50 to 100m away from the Mast in order for the 2x2 or 4x4 Mimo a chance to kick in for enhanced speed.