ATT Microcell in Austin, TX

Tue Feb 18 16:19:29 UTC 2020

Net neutrality!*

*Except if someone drives through a power pole.

On Tue, Feb 18, 2020 at 11:11 AM Darin Steffl <darin.steffl at mnwifi.com>
wrote:

> 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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