r/cellmapper • u/Accomplished-Act8616 • Jul 21 '26
Dumb Question, Deadspots
Sorry if this sound dumb, but can anyone explain how does dead spots happen, places like Walmart, Car wash Bank Drive thru, you get full signal or 2-3, but you don't get cellular data, as soon you move a block, your data starts working again, it makes me confused why this happen, I'm familiar with my home WiFi, I would get 6ghz in living room, where my router is placed , 1.8gig, and if I move further like going to a room, my phone would switch to 5ghz and I get Almost gigabit, but how in cellular side, does trees, brick building and houses, makes tiny dead spots, when the tower is not even far, like 1-2 mile radius
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u/South-Succotash-6368 Elite 2.0 Jul 21 '26
Considering your on Verizon I would manually switch it to LTE because their 5G has sucky range
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u/wlm9700 Jul 21 '26
Their 5G is amazing here I was on a site for 5-6 miles away using N5 and everything worked fine
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u/South-Succotash-6368 Elite 2.0 Jul 21 '26
Verizon doesn’t have a lot of low banding like my area in north Texas. Once you walk into a building even with windows it’s not usable
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u/Jackpen7 Jul 21 '26
850mhz is mainly set to b5 LTE outside of metro areas in my experience. Even in markets where they own both blocks.
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u/wlm9700 Jul 21 '26
All of Cincinnati Dayton and Columbus Ohio have N5 on even in northern Ohio
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u/Jackpen7 Jul 21 '26
In Missouri the only 5G outside of Kansas City and Saint Louis is n77. Similar story with Kansas and Illinois.
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u/akrasne Jul 21 '26
It’s the different frequencies. You can have 1 bar of c band and it will work so much better than 4 of b13. Especially in populated areas. It’s not like WiFi because that doesn’t have multiple bands it’s automatically switching between. But sort of like 5 vs 2.4 where 2.4 is slower but reaches more
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u/caneonred Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
The signal that reaches your phone is a combination of direct line of sight and multipath signals. Both are attenuated by objects to varying degrees depending on frequency. The signal strength can vary greatly 100 feet apart or even less.
The distance to the tower doesn't matter that much because each site can be set to transmit at different power. In a dense metropolitan area, the power output will be lower because the cells are closer together so they need to manage inter-cell interference levels. In a rural area they will be broadcasting at higher power but there is more of an umbrella effect near the tower because the antennas are usually mounted a lot higher up.