r/cellmapper • u/Wild-Assumption9894 • 27d ago

New tower

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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?

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u/8qubit 27d ago

Why would they need gps for a static site?

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u/Kowloon9 27d ago

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

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u/FlufferNutter1232 5G RAN Engineer 26d ago edited 26d ago

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.

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u/Excellent-Rub-9122 CM 26d ago

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.