Cell Phone Signal Strength Varies With Phones?

[NW-Bound]

Yes. It is very common for a tower to host antennas for different networks. The tower, the base building, and the support equipment are owned by a company neutral to all carriers. Besides Crown Castle, American Tower is another such company.

Carriers used to have their own towers and base buildings. Then, they changed their business model, and divest of this asset type to companies like American Tower, which then will host multiple carriers. It's more economically efficient.

The image below shows 3 levels of antennas, for 3 different networks.

If T-Al and his wife are on the same contract/same carrier, then they should be on the same network.

 

[Hermit]

The carrier is far more important than the phone in the suburbs and rural places. If you are not in a dense metropolitan area , some carriers are " sort of" on real world coverage, regardless of what the coverage maps.

In the foothill areas of so cal, Verizon works virtually everywhere , ATT works most, but not all places, Sprint and T mobil can work great on one block, and drop to useless in 500 feet.

I stay with Verizon, even at the oppressive cost due to rock solid coverage in the hillsides. They spend the money on micro cell sites where needed.

My municipal issued official work cellphone on T mobil does not work at all at mom's house in the hills. .

I recently switched from Verizon to Boom Mobile which uses Verizon towers. It is about half the cost of Verizon and works just like Verizon. They even have US operators.

There is no cell service where I live. I use Google Voice and Hangouts over a satellite internet connection. It is certainly not the best, but I can make and receive calls which sometimes is important.

My son-in-law has a Nexus phone and gets better reception on T-Mobile than DD on Verizon most of the time including out here in the boondocks.

 

[GravitySucks]

Didn't confirm. That's possible.

Can someone explain this: There's only one tower that we have any chance of receiving signals from at our house. Given that, is it still possible that Lena's phone and mine are using different networks? Can different networks share the same tower?

Yes. Many towers are independently owned and lease space to the carriers, so individual towers can support many carriers. I think if you are both on the same carrier, her phone is better at receiving a marginal signal.
For example, at one place an iPhone using VZ network could not reach the network while the MotoG phone on the same network had three bars.

 

[TromboneAl]

Update: We bought a Samsung Galaxy Express 3 with a SIM from H2OWirelessNow.com. I was hoping that that phone would happen to have better coverage than my phone.

It does NOT have coverage in our house. IOW, its coverage is like my H2OWireless phone.

So, we'll send that back.

 

[Beldar]

IIRC Tracfone CDMA uses Verizon, we verified that at the time we switched to them (about 4 yrs ago). We also verified we were well within the "strong" footprinnt of a nearby Verizon tower. Absolutely no connection problems, although personally I have cell phone audio quality (too compressed).

Our SimpliSafe alarm also uses Verizon CDMA with no problems. GSM coverage is very poor in our city.

_B

 

[WestUniversity]

At one time when we were on Verizon years ago, we had to manually update our phones periodically to recognize any new towers added to the network. I think we had to dial *228 or maybe *226. Usually once we updated our reception was better...

 

[calmloki]

At one time when we were on Verizon years ago, we had to manually update our phones periodically to recognize any new towers added to the network. I think we had to dial *228 or maybe *226. Usually once we updated our reception was better...

Is the same thing accomplished by going to airplane mode then out to force a search for a new signal? I was just doing that with my old iPhone 5S with only one bar showing. On AT&T BTW

 

[WestUniversity]

If I remember correctly for Verizon CDMA phones, dialing that code actually updated the programming in the phone. Their system would actually walk you through some prompts and then let you know when it was finished with the update...

 

[WestUniversity]

I found this post on a Verizon support site...

“I want to ensure you are able to update your towers with the latest PRL (Preferred Roaming list). If you have a 3G device, you would need to dial *228. As tikibar1 mentioned, on 4G LTE devices, the PRL is updated with your SIM card. To ensure you have the latest PRL, you can power your phone off and remove/reinsert the SIM card once a month or so.”

Hopefully that helps...

 

[Tractor guy]

It may be a function of what frequency your phone and carrier are using. The Tracfone network is 3G and only uses 900 & 1800 MHz. H2O wireless uses 850 and 900 Mhz for 3G so by elimination, it is likely that your tracfone phone is using 900 MHz on the H2O wireless network. Are your smart phones are trying to use 4G or LTE? These are higher frequencies, are more easily blocked, and don't have as good coverage.

Also, not all antennas are created equal. Some phones just have better reception than others.

When I was looking to improve my reception, I found this summary of things to do. https://www.wilsonamplifiers.com/blog/9-easy-ways-to-improve-your-cell-phone-signal/