New Mast plans in my area

[CyberModz]

Hello all,

I noticed that when I looked on mast data I saw an application for a new 4g/5g mast with ee and three. This mast was submitted in September 2020 but has been nearly 2 years. Do they take this long to make? The reason I am asking is that the mast that I am connected to now is being blocked by lots of trees and barely gets a signal. If I do get a signal I get about 5mbps down with 500kbps up. Not enough to do anything. I am hopefully waiting for the mast to be built.

I hope I can get some advice on how long they take or if It is possible that ee can cut the overgrown trees down as my street is less than 200meters away from the mast but gets a low signal of -110dbm plus.

Thanks

[bristolian]

Timescales from building a new site to go-live can be anything from a few weeks to much longer. 20-odd months that you mention is on the unusual side but not uncommon either.

I suspect your speed issues are unrelated to the foliage, which should get picked up as part of BAU network maintenance.

[CyberModz]

Thanks for the quick reply @bristolian,

Yep seems odd after all the plan was approved and all the maps and plans are there. Just got to wait but been a while.

However, for the mast issue, I thought dense tree cover would cause some signal loss as I am lower than the mast and between me and the mast is lots of trees. I used the EE signal checker and says great coverage. I also used the cell mapper app on my phone and did some walks. Found out that at home I get -110dbm but as soon as I leave my street and head around the trees the signal goes to -86dbm. This is way better, so could ee not do anything for this as my street feels like a dead zone? 

Thanks,

[bristolian]

You're confusing coverage with capacity/spectrum, which are two different things.

The speeds you achieve are largely dictated by the available spectrum & carriers on your serving site, and how many other users you're sharing that with. The signal bars & metrics you quote, broadly dictate the quality of your signal - but not how much data that signal can carry.

You could have a high-capacity serving site with very weak perceived coverage, and equally very strong indicated service from a low-capacity site.

What EARFCN and/or eNB ID does CellMapper report?

[CyberModz]

Thanks for the reply @bristolian,

When I look in the cell mapper app the EARFCN shows 1617 and the eNb ID says 26857:2

Thanks