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Phone hanging onto weak EE signal

frvic93

Pro Member
I wondered if any of you knew why this would happen. I have a reasonably good 4G signal from an EE mast (two, in fact) - but only really on bands 1 and 3, probably because I'm in the shadow of the first mast and there's clutter between me and the other mast. For some reason, though, my phone decides to camp on band 7 from either of the two masts, with an RSRP around -115 to -120. Why does it do this? It doesn't really affect my experience but it strikes me as odd.
 
its the network configuration designed to spread the load* across the available bands - thresholds and priorities are set so that devices use the highest priority band it can within the thresholds

*the load I'm talking about here is the primary control channel load (PCC); this is the primary band through which all the necessary signalling occurs. data may use the primary channel and/or other aggregated carriers (SCC); these may report higher/better signal metrics than the PCC

if all devices used the same band/carrier for their PCC then that would become saturated and all that PCC would be doing is handling the signalling traffic, resulting in no capacity for data traffic; as happens when there is abnormal localised load (e.g. football matches where there isn't sufficient capacity from the surrounding cells)
 
its the network configuration designed to spread the load* across the available bands - thresholds and priorities are set so that devices use the highest priority band it can within the thresholds

*the load I'm talking about here is the primary control channel load (PCC); this is the primary band through which all the necessary signalling occurs. data may use the primary channel and/or other aggregated carriers (SCC); these may report higher/better signal metrics than the PCC

if all devices used the same band/carrier for their PCC then that would become saturated and all that PCC would be doing is handling the signalling traffic, resulting in no capacity for data traffic; as happens when there is abnormal localised load (e.g. football matches where there isn't sufficient capacity from the surrounding cells)
Thanks for the explanation - that makes sense.
 
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its the network configuration designed to spread the load* across the available bands - thresholds and priorities are set so that devices use the highest priority band it can within the thresholds

*the load I'm talking about here is the primary control channel load (PCC); this is the primary band through which all the necessary signalling occurs. data may use the primary channel and/or other aggregated carriers (SCC); these may report higher/better signal metrics than the PCC

if all devices used the same band/carrier for their PCC then that would become saturated and all that PCC would be doing is handling the signalling traffic, resulting in no capacity for data traffic; as happens when there is abnormal localised load (e.g. football matches where there isn't sufficient capacity from the surrounding cells)

Can I just understand, when you say surrounding cells can that mean the same physical site as one site can have many bands? Or do you mean actual different sites/masts?
 
Can I just understand, when you say surrounding cells can that mean the same physical site as one site can have many bands? Or do you mean actual different sites/masts?
I chose the word cells because it covers either situation - every location is different - there could be a rural location with one serving site which has multiple bands (so 2+ cells) which due to a local music festival gets saturated for a weekend, or there could be a urban football stadium which is covered by (e.g.) 3 sites, but those 3 sites only have a single band each (3 cells).
 
Last edited:
Can I just understand, when you say surrounding cells can that mean the same physical site as one site can have many bands? Or do you mean actual different sites/masts?
To add to Gavin's reply, a cell is one single sector of one site on one frequency band.

A site will normally have multiple directional sectors, and usually have multiple frequency bands.

A worked example would be a 3 sector site carrying 4 frequency bands (say B3+B3+B7+B20) - this site will have 12 separate cells.
 
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