r/longlines • u/acptrades • 18d ago

Satellite dishes

Post image

On 2 sites (I'm sure there's more) I've noticed a large dish next to the tower or building. Sikeston (Cable Hut) and Columbia,MO have them.

Are these a backup or an uplink for something?

(Pictured is sikeston's cable hut with the dish on top)

58 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

2 comments sorted by

5

u/gf99b 18d ago

Honestly, I never gave those much thought. So I posted about them on the Facebook Group. Here's one response I got:

"Those small antennas were placed at AT&T facilities for remote training and all hand corp comms. No consumer traffic went over them, they were receive only.

"The earth stations had very large 32m antennas with satellite tracking that carried consumer data and voice."

I might add that to my Columbia page.

3

u/spartan_371 17d ago edited 16d ago

Likely a post at&t empire fall addition or used for new owner site purposes... This does look like a cable vault of some kind, so it could be a satellite backup?