how much it focuses signal reception and transmission in a particular direction. If you live by a freeway, your data rates will be slower during rush hour.Īntenna Gain: Antenna gain is a measure of its directivity - i.e. If you live in a residential area, your speeds will be slower in the evenings and on weekends, for example. It's not unusual to see data rates fluctuate drastically within a day and over the course of the week. When towers are 'busier' you will see lower rates. Tower congestion: The more users on a tower, the fewer Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) are assigned to each user. If your signal is over about -95 dBm, more signal strength won't mean any faster data rates.

Reference Signal Receive Power (RSRP): This is a measure of signal strength.

When you're connected to one tower, the other towers are interference. Every tower for each carrier transmits on the same band. Intra-cell interference: This is the main reason why signal quality/SINR can be low. LTE SINR ranges from -15 (very bad) to 30 (excellent).

It's more important than signal strength in most cases! Improving your SINR is the best way to improve data rates. Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR): This is a measure of the quality of your signal. That means more bandwidth and can have a huge impact on your data rates. The LTE bands in use in the US today are:Ĭarrier Aggregation (CA): If multiple frequency bands are available, and your device supports it, you will connect on multiple bands simultaneously. Ignore those bars.īands: different carriers use different bands, which are licensed to them by the FCC. You can have 1 bar and awesome data rates and 5 bars and terrible data rates. Don't judge things based on bars, just run a speed test instead. They're a combination of signal strength (RSRP) and signal quality (SINR). Bars: Bars are a really crude measure of your signal.

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