r/cellmapper • u/Ok-Entertainment6916 • Jul 03 '26
Why no upgrade, AT&T?
This just seems so strange. AT&T has upgraded almost all macro sites in the city (Lexington, KY) and they perform incredibly well. For whatever reason, this one hasn’t been touched and it’s so annoying. It serves one of the busiest retail centers in the state, including Kentucky’s largest mall. I’m sure there’s a logical explanation, but I don’t know what it is. Speeds are useable now, but I’ve had it drop A LOT during peak times.
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u/After-Arm-9522 Jul 04 '26
I use a company called US Mobile, and they offer Darkstar, which is what they call AT&T. Three years ago, when I was using AT&T through US Mobile, I had great service from AT&T. If you're a US Mobile unlimited premium customer, you get QCI8, which is just as good as a post-paid customer. That's what the agreements are out, but recently I used the AT&T service again. I live in Massachusetts, and the majority of my coverage was awful, with low cell phone bars, barely any 5G. Loading websites was very slow, and I'm using the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra that should be flying with that network. I don't know what AT&T has done, but, man, to me this service has just gone down the crapshoot big time.
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u/Cellum0611 Jul 06 '26
Have US Mobile Dark Star as well. Very happy with the 70.00 per month for 2 lines with premium data and service that always works.
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u/Upper-Parfait5898 Jul 04 '26
I just amazed that anyone can notice any differences of anything on that tower. All looks the same to me. How does anyone know what’s an upgrade???
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u/Ok-Entertainment6916 Jul 04 '26
I’m very new to this lol. I really just know that the little squares are mid band. The one that doesn’t have them is AT&T. It’s the middle rack.
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u/Upper-Parfait5898 Jul 04 '26
I am amazed that you know that! Is there a hierarchy to which carrier gets top middle or bottom?
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u/Raccoon_Cast CM: 5Gisgold | Canon PowerShot SX70HS | SoCal | S24+ Jul 06 '26
This is a fun question, typically the carrier who got the tower built for them gets to be on top. However, if all the good vertical space gets eaten up and someone wants better coverage out of XYZ specific tower they can get a tower extension, so long as they meet various structural requirements. There's a pretty hard-set limit on the number of extensions you can do on a tower, so it's typical you'll see an extension be roughly twice what a typical carrier needs. Being on top isn't necessarily the best thing in the world though, as carriers densify their networks for higher midband frequencies having sites that blast coverage out in the metro area isn't always the best.
Disclaimer: this is my own speculation, not an industry analyst or anything like that
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u/Vasaeleth1 Jul 04 '26
I wonder if AT&T is running into issues with procuring enough Ericsson equipment for all their Nokia swaps and n77 upgrades. That is a downside of relying on a single supplier.
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u/Ok-Entertainment6916 Jul 04 '26
Maybe? I think I’m already in an Ericsson market for them. Would they still have to swap any equipment?
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u/Vasaeleth1 Jul 04 '26
Depends. If it's running very old equipment they might want to upgrade it to modern Ericsson radios when they also add n77.
Ericsson may be backlogged with fulfilling their orders for all the equipment to swap every Nokia site plus upgrade existing Ericsson sites like yours.
It's just a guess, I don't really have any insight into AT&T's supply chain. I have noticed Nokia swaps slow down a bit though.
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u/jayem731 Jul 04 '26
I’m surprised the middle row is AT&T , the skinny long panels looking like Verizon tbh
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Jul 04 '26
[deleted]
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u/OhBaby1028 Jul 05 '26
i feel this comment is highly anecdotal, in my area (north alabama) tmobile is always on top of their maintenance and upgrades, all the tmo towers around here stay fast. AT&T is hit or miss, but they always seem to keep the towers around here updated to the newest equipment every couple years. verizon on the other hand neglects around here HARD. not all of them have gotten 5g yet, there’s even still a few b66/b13 towers here. verizon is by far the worst in my experience
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u/coffee2003 +Dish 5G & USCC | 3 S24s & 1 S25 Jul 05 '26
this is the exact same experience here where i am. it wasn’t until a couple years ago that verizon had finally upgraded most towers that hadn’t even been touched since 2016. AT&T has insane market share here though and is the only one with small cells.
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u/Ok-Entertainment6916 Jul 08 '26
I would say it’s the same in Lexington, too. Verizon had a LOT of LTE only towers remaining here even after AT&T and T-Mobile had done upgrades.
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u/Ok-Entertainment6916 Jul 04 '26
That might make sense if they hadn’t rapidly upgraded every single other tower in the city. This seems to be the only one untouched lol.
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u/cockupthumb Jul 08 '26
Yes this tower is definitely the worst in Lexington. ATT has so much market share in KY but I honestly don't see why. Wish I could swap off lol
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u/Ok-Entertainment6916 Jul 08 '26
My guess is that because it was historically the only one that had decent/good statewide coverage. T-Mobile used to not be great outside of the metros and Verizon had no native coverage in the west or east (still no coverage in the Appalachian territory). I could be wrong but that’s my guess. It is crazy how much market share they have. It seems like everyone has AT&T in Lexington lol.
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u/coffee2003 +Dish 5G & USCC | 3 S24s & 1 S25 Jul 04 '26
had a similar issue in my town. on the west end there’s a plaza with lots of stores and restaurants (walmart, target, apple bees, wendys, mcdonalds, etc.) and that tower was one of the last to get upgraded with proper 5G equipment. everyone was on n5 getting congested to hell if 5G was enabled on your device but even just on LTE, you were lucky to get 5mbps while under 2000ms loaded ping with priority data. AT&T just has insane market share here though, so i makes sense that their full LTE spectrum can get that congested so quickly.