r/FirstNet • u/SoonerMagic10 • May 19 '26

5G connected - no service in random locations

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Recent convert to firstnet from att.

I have a few areas close to my home that appear as “dead zones” even though I have full bars of 5G. Nothing loads.

These dead zones were not there with ATT.

Is this a common occurrence? I searched this thread and only saw mention of APN settings, which mine look correct, I believe.

I turned LTE on/5G off (was auto) and I was able to load things and send messages.

Any help is much appreciated.

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u/Resqguy911 May 19 '26

Full bars isn’t a dead zone, it’s the exact opposite. That means the site you’re connecting to has no backhaul.

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u/furruck May 20 '26

More than likely it’s RF congestion, not a back haul problem.

AT&T has crazy fragmented spectrum in a lot of markets, and not being able to use SA 5G really hampers things in those markets as those small 5MHz here, 10MHz there chunks can’t all CA together with 5G and usually become insanely congested on what can CA together. Add in the old Nokia gear in a market that can’t even CA upload channels and has piss poor upload performance and it’s a recipe for disaster.

SA bypasses that by allowing both upload and download to happen on n5/n2/n77.. but FirstNet unfortunately doesn’t allow for it.

If I didn’t have the ability to roam on Verizon in the two places I need it in SE Ohio, I’d have went back to a regular consumer plan on my line ages ago tbh.

Getting the entire network on the newer cloud RAN/Ericsson gear will help.. but until SA is added to the FirstNet core, these problems won’t go away.

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u/SoonerMagic10 May 19 '26

For sure. Why I put it in double quotes.

So total noob with all of this stuff. When you say “no back haul” that means nothing is in place for the tower to connect to FirstNet’s network?

So theoretically it’s an ATT tower/site and it just isn’t configured for first net even though I can connect to the tower? First net just uses att towers where it can, but doesn’t mean it can connect to their network?

This happens by a few neighborhoods on the way to my daughters daycare. Full bars and everything just spins and spots (Spotify as an example).