ATT Microcell in Austin, TX

Darin Steffl darin.steffl at mnwifi.com
Tue Feb 18 16:09:00 UTC 2020


Matt,

You're correct that if most of these small cells goes offline during a
power outage, the remaining macro cells would not be able to handle the
load well.

Data would be nearly useless and phone/texts may be sporadic.

I believe that when this happens, they should proactively block or limit
video and file download/upload traffic as much as possible to make sure
communications like calls and texts can go through with the highest success
rate possible. Netflix and YouTube should never hinder more important
communications in my opinion. Maybe it's as simple as putting a rate limit
for each cellphone connected to these now overloaded sectors so no one can
hog the cell capacity.

It would be pretty sweet though if small cells all had a linked power
source following the same fiber paths that all hook back into a large
battery backup or generator somewhere. Maybe 30-40 small cells can have
backup power from one macro cell generator. I'm not sure if they're
installed that way or not but it would ideal. Otherwise, you're losing 10
to 100x of the capacity of a cell network during power outages if the small
cells go down.

On Tue, Feb 18, 2020, 9:46 AM Matt Erculiani <merculiani at gmail.com> wrote:

> It will be interesting to see how this plays out as reliance on these
> small cells for capacity grows. I'd imagine demand for cellular bandwidth
> goes up during a power outage and not down.
>
> Is it reasonable to think that there could be a situation where cell
> capacity is not available during a time of need because these sites will
> simply go down and significantly reduce coverage/quality in dense
> metropolitan areas?
>
> -Matt
>
> On Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 19:15 Shane Ronan <shane at ronan-online.com> wrote:
>
>> This is a small cell. They are very common across all of the carriers.
>>
>> It is NOT intended to provide primary coverage for the area.
>>
>> It IS intended to provide additional capacity to the immediate area.
>>
>> Think of the large cell towers as providing blanket coverage, while small
>> cells provide hot spots of increased capacity.
>>
>> Most small cells have no battery backup or generator at all, as it's not
>> feasible given the real estate available.
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 16, 2020, 5:58 PM Chris Boyd <cboyd at gizmopartners.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Since people on here like to talk about the generatorn run time on cell
>>> towers, I thought y’all might like to see an ATT microcell in downtown
>>> Austin, TX.  No apparent generator or battery on it.
>>>
>>> https://imgur.com/a/RY9Tg7h
>>>
>>> —Chris
>>
>>
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