With most carriers there is a limit to the number of towers you can have
with a single point of failure. It depends on the contract but anywhere
from 6 to 12 this is in regards to Macro sites. When it comes to small
cell they don't typically have the same requirement. Now that they are
moving to 10G per site there is a great deal more of the hub and spoke
vs rings. This is do to the difficulties with 100G+ routers and optics
running in cabinets without good environmental controls.
On 8/14/25 12:25 AM, Chris Fabien wrote:
We are in the process of providing dark fiber to multiple cell towers
in our rural area. Most are new towers and a couple are existing
towers with a new tenant going on. These towers definitely do not have
any diverse fiber connections. They do have a aggressive SLA in place.
Some of the towers do also have a microwave link. I am not sure if
this is temporary while the fiber route is being completed or will
remain as a permanent backup, but it just links back to another nearby
cell tower. From a fiber standpoint, a cut in one spot would take out
the majority of the towers for one carrier in this area.
I am aware of some cell towers in this area which do have a fiber ring
connecting them, they are all late 1990s original Alltel towers and
the fiber ring that hits them was CenturyTel and now owned by Lumen,
and runs in a large ring across several counties just hitting the old
Alltell towers. The new build towers just get one fiber feed from
whoever bid the best price.
On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 7:26 PM Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote:
We’re in a semi rural area. Nearly every celltower I’ve checked out has either
a licensed microwave feed or a single fiber feed. They might daisy chain a
tower via microwave to another tower that is fiber fed. And as they upgrade
towers to fiber, I assume the old microwave link stays in place and could be a
redundant path.
I’ve never seen a tower in our area with redundant fiber feeds. I mean, they
probably have multiple live strands, but one duct, which goes miles and miles
down the road. It seems the fiber routes can daisy chain from tower to tower
just like the microwave links did before them.
From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Adam Moffett
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2025 6:17 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] mobile and 5G Home Internet when a celltower is offline
I would assume the cell towers are on a ring, or otherwise have a physically
diverse back up. I don’t know about the others, but AT&T has strict
connectivity requirements. You don’t give them an SLA they give you the SLA and
you agree to it or you can’t sell them the backhaul.
…., But you know what they say about assuming
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From: AF <[email protected]> on behalf of Ken Hohhof <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2025 11:30:35 AM
To: 'AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group' <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] mobile and 5G Home Internet when a celltower is offline
I’m mainly trying to understand what happens now that many people are switching
to T-Mobile and Verizon home Internet (because it’s priced at $35 to $50).
I’ve started to see social media reports of outages.
So I’m thinking the hotspot feature on their phones should still work, or maybe
not? And maybe then they could roam to a different carrier? Or maybe not?
I was speculating that 5G Home Internet is more like conventional FWA in that
each customer is qualified based on celltower capacity and distance, so maybe
they wouldn’t allow it to just switch to a different tower.
And adding to the mystery, one of the companies around here that puts in fiber
to celltowers has a subsidiary that is doing FTTH. So if VZHI is down because
of a fiber cut, will fiber in town also be down?
I also wonder what happens to TMHI and VZHI when they upgrade everything on a
tower, as happened with the transition from 4G/LTE to 5G. We saw Verizon strip
everything off some towers, new RRUs and cables, and then screw around with
crews coming out for months because evidently it didn’t go smoothly. I’m
assuming mobile users would switch to another tower, perhaps at lower speeds,
but what about home Internet?
From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Trey Scarborough
Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2025 10:10 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] mobile and 5G Home Internet when a celltower is offline
As Adam stated if the site gets disconnected it it will drop all the
connections. Home internet is less likely to connect to another tower. Most
will prefer the higher frequency bands and in many cases are depending on small
cells to provide coverage. With that being the case it is often that it will
not fail over to the lower frequency.
If your looking for phone service that will fail over to multiple carriers US
Mobile is probably the best solution. You can get service that will run on
multiple carriers for a nominal monthly charge.
On 8/12/25 1:36 PM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Who here knows more than I do about how cellular networks work during a
celltower outage?
Would I be correct to assume that if, for example, a Verizon tower is offline,
your mobile phone would connect to another nearby Verizon tower? And that you
could not only make voice calls and send text messages, but also use your phone
as a hotspot for Internet?
And that if there was no other Verizon tower in range, your phone would roam to a
T-Mobile or AT&T tower? And in that case, could you still use the hotspot
feature?
Now, what about Home Internet service? Would I be correct to assume no roaming
and probably not even another Verizon tower? If your designated tower is down,
no home Internet?
One last question, if the tower has power and all the electronics is running
but the backhaul to the tower is down (like a fiber cut), do phones still
connect to the tower but have no service? Or will they move to another tower?
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