In my small town Verizon cell service is terrible. No service sometimes (SOS), no data or slow data downloads.

The local Verizon and Spectrum (they use Verizon towers) stores claim the problems are birds nesting on multiple cell towers. I have heard that the birds were Ospreys or eagles.

The service is so bad that the local government switched to at&t cell phones.

A call to Verizon or Spectrum will get a there are no issues reported. But if you push Verizon will start giving credits on your monthly bill. My son got $50 off after calling.

Anyone else have this kind of problem?

Kind of like this??

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Kind of like this??

Never happen today, the birds are too busy posting their TikTok videos.

That sounds like a bullsh*t answer they use to deflect complaints.

I admit that it's been a couple of decades, but I used to work for one of the firms that built and installed cellular networks. I never once heard that being an issue.

You say that you're in a small town. Your part of the Verizon network may not be 5G yet. Plus, prior capacity was based on one user with one device. Now, it's common for one user to have multiple devices on the network. My guess would be that there are too many users/devices and not enough capacity.

The birds would not be building a nest in front of the radiating elements.

More likely they would build on the platform on the older towers. Newer towers don't have that many horizontal tubes in which to build a nest, or they put spikes there.

By the way, I get more bad information from cell phone stores than any other place I go.

If they told me this, I'd be like...

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:
The birds would not be building a nest in front of the radiating elements.

Not necessarily true. We had a Bald Eagle build a nest right in front of our Microwave dish providing backhaul to a neighboring site. We had to wait until nesting season was over to be able to climb the tower and address the issue. That was about 6 months so the neighbor site was basically down for that entire time.

We also cannot climb during Osprey nesting season so any tower issues cannot be addressed during that time.

Oops. I thought that this was a bendable thread.

The antenna modules are directional.

Unless you can see the nest built on the outside of the structure (and a few birds that are medium-rare) I'm fairly certain that the nest isn't able to interfere with the functional range of the tower.

It would have to be a big nest also. The modules have about the same length an spacing as the stripes in a parking lot.

quote:

Originally posted by VANQUISH:

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:
The birds would not be building a nest in front of the radiating elements.

Not necessarily true. We had a Bald Eagle build a nest right in front of our Microwave dish providing backhaul to a neighboring site. We had to wait until nesting season was over to be able to climb the tower and address the issue. That was about 6 months so the neighbor site was basically down for that entire time.

We also cannot climb during Osprey nesting season so any tower issues cannot be addressed during that time.

Ah, yes, hadn't thought about the backhaul. I notice they sometimes put those dishes in places where something could indeed block it. I guess it goes wherever it needs to in order to get to the next destination.

On the ones around here with issues they modify the tower to offer an attractive space above the radiating antennas for building nests. Seems to work great. Small side note when I was a college student (as an experienced rock climber) I was hired to climb trees and such to support collecting egg shell samples for DDT testing. My job was to climb just behind the biologist and protect him from the mother birds as these were active nests. I wouldn't wish Osprey moms on anyone. As a double aside what the biologists always said to me was we were lucky that its ospreys and not eagles. And one of the wonders of ddt removal is where I live the eagles are back in big numbers and the ospeys are pushed down the food chain.