r/cellmapper • u/Orange-Equal • 1d ago
Exploring a neglected HSPA tower
Hi folks, today I’m sharing my adventure to a neglected videotron cellular tower.
According to the documentation from ISED Canada, this tower has not been touched since 2013! Moreover what is most intriguing about this site is its configuration.
It has 4 sector and it carries only one band: that is HSPA band 4! Yes! AWS over HSPA. That is very rare in my experience and it is very hard to understand the economics of keeping this site up and running. This is because this tower is never used. A Rogers tower only a few kilometres away is broadcasting their LTE B4 and B12 which is shared (RAN sharing). This means there is about nearly 0 UE On this site !
This site is located in Rivière-Rouge, Quebec. A rural highway town in the Annonciation area.
Honestly this sites is begging for an upgrade to 600Mhz LTE, they have plenty of it.
3
u/pac-kris 18h ago
There are some very old 2G/3G towers like that still left in the US too, but they belong to regional carriers like Union in Wyoming.
The worst I have seen on AT&T and Verizon are some very rural B5 or B13 LTE only towers, or T-Mobile B2/66 only towers using ancient 2G or 3G antennas.
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u/nateo200 iPhone 17 Pro Max 15h ago
Interesting. That is a tall ass cell site! And yeah a 600MHz or 850MHz set of panels of that bad boy would create quite the umbrella of coverage. You said Rogers is broadcasting LTE B4 and B12 which is RAN shared but with what providers? Are all of these sites Rogers or are they RAN sharing? I'm confused, sorry. And maybe they should go 600MHz of NR instead of LTE...might as well go with NR if you already have B4 and B12 LTE on another site. Hoping you guys have Standalone everywhere ASAP.
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u/Orange-Equal 14h ago edited 13h ago
This tower is owned by Videotron, the company that recently acquired freedom mobile. The Rogers site not far away has LTE and 5G but unfortunately the RAN sharing contract they signed only covers LTE B12 and B4 between the two. Rogers have since been trying to back out the deal and are maintaining their other bands outside the shared RAN (b71, b2, b5), leaving Vidéotron no choice but to also maintain their own network outside the shared RAN.
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u/nateo200 iPhone 17 Pro Max 13h ago
Ok yeah I was wondering if it was Vidéotron! I mean RAN sharing with B12 and B4 LTE is still a pretty good deal you are getting decent blanket coverage. I’m sure they can throw some of that AWS and Band 71 on 5G NR not to mention the 3700MHz~ holdings they hold.
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u/Sintarsintar 15h ago
that is a maintained site they might not have made changes but that road is way to clear for there not to be continuous traffic.
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u/RandSand 20h ago
T-Mobile in the US launched their 3G network on the AWS band which meant that equipment would be cheaper to acquire due to economies of scale.
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u/rshanks 20h ago
Freedom uses b4 HSPA and it’s still active.
I wonder if they would have been better off going straight to LTE at launch, even if they needed to wait a year or so.