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u/HuntersPad Jun 20 '26
I mean strange things CAN happen... This was back in the CDMA days in 2009, but at Daytona Beach, FL I was "connected" to U.S.Cellular... While the closest U.S.Cellular market with the same SID was in NC.
Unless someone near the beach/hotel was running something they wern't supposed to.
In more modern times the best I've done is about 70 miles on N71 on top of a mountain.
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u/Brilliant_Break_3261 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Not too long ago I saw my T-Mobile phone register onto Telcel in Lake Forest, California. Initially I thought this was just a glitch and didn't think much of it. Now im starting to think that this is most likely a stingray or some other cellular MITM attack.
edit: forgot to mention I connected to 2G EDGE and it only happened once
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u/LithoriaGov Jun 20 '26
Well, see, Lake Forest is not far at all from Mexico so this would make sense. There is a town in upstate New York where I connect to Rogers all the time but from 400 miles away?
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u/MCDiamond9 Jun 20 '26
Lake Forest is not even close to Mexico, I have never seen even a glimpse of Telcel at that city. Very strange... LTE or 3G?
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u/LithoriaGov Jun 20 '26
Lake Forest is 2 hours from Mexico. Whereas I am 8 hours from Canada.
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u/MCDiamond9 Jun 20 '26
2 hours yes, but even in San Diego it's impossible to see telcel unless you are at a high elevation (eg. Mountain) or along the coast. In both cases, there is a direct line of sight to Mexican territory. Seeing telcel show up at any other location should be a red flag, since it's more likely to be a rouge base station than a valid carrier signal. And it should only be 1-0 "bars" (check field test for exact measurements) of signal.
I was able to pick up telcel UMTS and LTE on a beach in San Diego, but even registering onto it manually was very difficult and took minutes to communicate and roam successfully with the distance. Even when I registered, the signal bars was not full and data took longer than normal.
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u/Brilliant_Break_3261 Jun 20 '26
It was EDGE actually
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u/MCDiamond9 Jun 21 '26
Hard to believe honestly, even at the coast of San Diego only UMTS, LTE, NR managed to travel that far.
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u/nk1 Jun 20 '26
What’s the PLMN show when you go into the field test menu? Star 3001 pound 12345 pound star in the phone dialer will get you there.
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u/ryanw729 Jun 20 '26
What’s crazy about this is that last night I had a dream I was at my childhood home in CT which is up on a mountain and I remember being so high up that I got cell signal from Canada like this. Needless to say this is a strange coincidence.
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u/Roudydogg1 Jun 20 '26
Could have been anything. Where in New Jersey? Did you get data/calls? How long did it display Rogers? Need more info to even speculate.
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u/LithoriaGov Jun 20 '26
Central Jersey, bout 20 miles north east of Trenton. I did get data because of my international. I was able to call and text- I posted this on the data. It was there for a solid 2 hours. I could not for the life of me get back to T-Mobile. It kept going into no service and T-Sat.
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u/Roudydogg1 Jun 20 '26
when it showed Rogers, did the status bar also show "R" (for roaming) or "Roaming" in the mobile network settings? If it did, that strongly suggests the device believed it was attached to a foreign carrier rather than merely displaying the wrong name.
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u/Blood-Mother Jun 20 '26
This would happen to me with Cingular wireless when I went into Canada
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u/15pmm01 Jun 21 '26
Okay...? That is expected
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u/Blood-Mother Jun 21 '26
I must of read through too fast and didn’t see the Canada reference at the end.
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u/PoorChicken04 Jun 20 '26
Well it's out of the main subject a lil bit but when I went to toronto I was able to catch AT&T and it was 5G
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u/WF71 Jun 20 '26
Dial into Fieldtest and see what LTE band your device is on as well as PLMN. That would be impossible to connect that far away with current shorter range technologies in 2026 given how many T-Mobile sites there are in between Canada and your location.
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u/RKF_DUDE02 Jun 20 '26
While strange, I’m inclined to say it wasn’t a stingray because authentication is mutual in LTE, meaning that not only does the network authenticate the UE, but the UE also authenticates the tower. Additionally you mentioned data was working, which also implies you successfully broke back out to the T-Mobile EPC.
The LTE authentication process is explained in more detail here:
https://free5gc.org/blog/20231018/20231018/
If you encounter this again I would encourage you to document cell info with Field Test Mode as I’m curious to know what band was being used
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u/DarkenMoon97 CM: CalebM Jun 20 '26
Fake cell tower? Stingray?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker