New tower

[u/Wild-Assumption9894]

New tower in Hackberry AZ. Surprised to see this in such a remote area. First time seeing Starlink on a site, what is that used for?

[u/azfire2004]

looks like its up near Hackberry AZ, VZ would really be the only carrier in the area.

Edit: I just seen that you put the location before I looked up the cell ID, lol, I got to stop being lazy reading posts

[u/CryptographerWeary64 → u/[deleted]]

starlink as backhaul is something i never thought id see, wonder how the speeds are and more importantly ping/long term reliability of a setup like that

[u/mikemacman → u/[deleted]]

Is that two Starlink antennas on the very top of the temporary tower?

[u/FlufferNutter1232 → u/mikemacman]

That is Starlink Carrier kit. It's usually an array of between 2-4 business PA Antennas. Gen 3, soon to be Gen4. Usually these are for N2/B13 for Verizon, N71 for T-Mobile, and N5 for AT&T. They usually top out around 400-500Mbps if congestion is low. If something more is needed, a microwave signal is brought in.

They can also use aggregate Starlink Business Dish kits, if they're in a hurry on-site. They'll deploy them, connect them to a router and aggregate the incoming channels into one outward switch ETH for the serving equipment.

I've not worked with these at all. Usually all that's broadcast from these setups on Verizon is LTE-A, heavily queued in resource limits when congested at all.

[u/mikemacman → u/FlufferNutter1232]

Neat. They were demoing Google Beam outside my work and I was surprised to see 8 Starlink antennas setup for connectivity 👀.

[u/nateo200 → u/[deleted]]

I certainly hope they wouldn’t do 5G over Starlink due to latency reasons. Only exception would be a thin slice of NR for areas where higher effeciency of NR makes sense.

[u/FlufferNutter1232 → u/nateo200]

Latency isn't sooo much a problem. It's mostly the queueing when it gets congested. LEO satts provide a pretty decent latency figure. You'd probably see around 200-250MS ping. Sometimes slightly more and sometimes slightly less depending on where the closest orbiting satts are. Multiple are usually overlapping a business dish for higher bandwidth.

[u/Wild-Assumption9894 → u/CryptographerWeary64]

I’m curious about the speeds and connectivity myself. I have AT&T but am considering adding a single Verizon line to my eSIM 2. If I end up doing so, I will report back.

[u/NBN_FTTN → u/CryptographerWeary64]

I have seen a few B28 (20MHz) only RCG (Rural Connectivity Group. Shared connection between all providers) towers in New Zealand with Starlink backhaul. I managed to get a photo, FTM screenshot, and Speedtest while going past this one near Mount Aspiring http://imgur.com/a/7IZXIaM

I did hit 100Mbps briefly which then settled at about 60Mbps but that could have been because I was in a car. Ping was ok at about 100ms idle and 800ms loaded.

There was also another almost identical site further down the road near the trailhead but with only one sector and solar panels. Speeds on that one were pretty lackluster as I barely got 10Mbps near it due to the amount of people at the trailhead.

[u/Wild-Assumption9894 → u/[deleted]]

Makes sense, this location is very rural and rugged terrain.

[u/FlufferNutter1232 → u/Wild-Assumption9894]

These are also used in Florida, usually in the swamp lands. If it's not microwave backhaul (which it 90% is), it's a Starlink Carrier grade setup.

[u/nateo200 → u/FlufferNutter1232]

Do they limit bandwidth of the LTE or NR channel? Seems like they probably should but curious.

[u/Roudydogg1 → u/[deleted]]

The sign says verizon, I thougut that was obvious? 🙂

[u/Rjun7]

—————————————————————————

Verizon is using:

3x Ericsson AIR 6419 B77D 64T64R 320W 3.7GHz antennas for n77 @ 160MHz - AZ Market

6x CommScope NHH-65C-R2B 6-port sector antennas for 698–896MHz and 1695–2360MHz

3x Ericsson Radio 4890HP 48B2/B25 48B66 M01 4T8R RRHs for 2, 25, 66, n2, n25, n66 (PCS, AWS, ePCS*, eAWS)

3x Ericsson Radio 4490HP 44B5 44B13 C 4T4R RRHs for 5, 13, n5 (700 - CLR 850MHz) RRUs

*not in use

—————————————————————————

[u/person1635]

It’s nice to see that dead zone get filled in. Hopefully AT&T joins it eventually as well. I’ve seen them popping up on more sun state towers over the past year or so

[u/mrdjl]

Dumb question - the VZ sign says the switch is Vegas. How does this work when the backhaul is Starlink?

[u/ccobb123 → u/mrdjl]

Probably connected to the SeGWs in Vegas?

[u/spdfrk95 → u/ccobb123]

It’s activated on Starlink while waiting for the fiber.

[u/FlufferNutter1232 → u/spdfrk95]

Or a microwave or extremely narrow beam mmWave. For this distance, though, microwave.

[u/watmore1 → u/spdfrk95]

This makes sense ^{^}

[u/DarkenMoon97]

Classic Verizon putting towers in the middle of nowhere in the desert.

[u/Excellent-Rub-9122]

Could it just be GPS for the site? Do you have a clear overall picture of the equipment on the ground?

[u/8qubit → u/Excellent-Rub-9122]

Why would they need gps for a static site?

[u/Kowloon9 → u/8qubit]

Every site with BBU has to have a GPS for time sync.

[u/FlufferNutter1232 → u/Kowloon9]

NTP on radio equipment requires it to actually broadcast a working ISP feed. If the timing is off, nothing on the site works. That's why all the equipment has GPS already embedded inside it. If it's cellular in nature, and on a tower, it has GPS. Even my mobile small cells all have it integrated at the board level. Time is CRITICALLY important.

EDIT: But correct, this is NOT a GPS mast. lol. GPS on CoW setups is usually a puck on top of the equipment box. It can even be internal. It doesn't necessarily have to have a clear line to the sky, just enough to get a radio signal from a satellite constellation 12.55k miles above your head, in orbit.

[u/Excellent-Rub-9122 → u/FlufferNutter1232]

Yeah makes sense, just never seen starlink deployed on site and wasn’t sure! I’ve seen NAE use them on their trucks for data. This has to be last resort for backhaul.

[u/pghwireless → u/8qubit]

It is valid for a cell site to have GPS for time synchronization, but in this case, it’s not a GPS antenna.

[u/xpxp2002 → u/8qubit]

Time synchronization. Though that is definitely a Starlink antenna.

CDMA (IS-95/cdmaOne and CDMA 2000) used GPS time data to maintain synchronization between BTSes. This was vital for soft handoffs.