Only getting 3g inside office building full#
Only getting 3g inside office building free#

Maybe an emergency call was placed kicking you off the channel you previously had, or a someone with a priority data arrangement requested use of the cell. The network may be taking a cell down for maintenance, or you were associated with a temporary cell. Moving your phone can make this effect much more pronounced.įinally, there are numerous edge cases that can cause this. Dead zones in your house are likely to be cause by multipath interference however as signals bounce around they destructively cancel in certain areas. It is entirely possible that the box truck that just parked down the street is causing an unfortunate reflection resulting in severe multipath interference (multiple signals taking different paths from the transmitting antenna to the receiving antenna as they are reflected off usually metal objects, arriving at different times causing a jumbled received signal) for the great 2100 MHz 3G signal you were getting forcing you to use a poor performing 850 MHz 2G cell. There are also propagation issues, though they are unlikely to cause such dramatic affect as above. Sometimes, of course, this works to your disadvantage and you will get worse rates, but it generally improves the net capacity of the network. It is entirely possible that you will get better data rates with 2 bars of 3G compared to 4 bars of 4G, depending on how loaded the particular cells are. This might sound like carriers screwing their customers over, but it's really an important construct in cellular networks. A network carrier might have a very loaded 700 MHz 4G carrier, and some lighter loaded 2100MHz 3G channels and want you to move to the 3G channels if you are in range. The same thing can happen between 3G and 4G.

Only getting 3g inside office building free#

In my area, for example, AT&T typically advertises their 1900 MHz (high frequency band) 2G cells as 20dB (100x) 'better' than those in the 850 MHz (low) band because they want mobiles that can see 1900 MHz band cells to use them, to free up cells on the lower bands for users who cannot. Generally speaking, higher frequencies will not propagate as far. This is most likely to happen between frequency bands, because the way the energy moves through space is very different depending on frequency. Typically this happens by making less loaded cells appear 'virtually more attractive' making your phone more likely to change which tower it is communicating with and listening to.

Only getting 3g inside office building full#

Ok, so full explanation: First, and most likely, is that your cellular provider is attempting to redistribute the load on their network. TL DWR It's probably your network trying to provide service to the greatest number of customers. There are several things that might be happening.