How tall are most cell phone towers

Also called a self-supporting tower, this type of tower offers incredible flexibility. It usually has three or four sides with similar shaped bases. The second type of tower is a monopole tower. This type of tower features a single steel or concrete tube tower, usually under 50 meters. It only requires one foundation.

The antennas are attached to the exterior. A guyed tower is cost-effective but requires a bigger amount of land. They are attached to the ground in all directions. Most radio and television towers are guyed towers.

The fourth type is the stealth tower , which we briefly touched upon before. They require additional materials that help them hide in plain sight.

While much more appealing, they often do not provide the same amount of capacity for tenants. The equipment on cell towers includes transceivers and other supporting technology.

These are installed in cabinets or shelters or any other way that wireless carriers choose to protect them. Some even create outdoor cabinets on concrete pads or prefabricated equipment shelters. There are multiple antennas attached to a cell tower, typically mounted on a head frame. Some towers even have up to 15 antennas per carrier.

Carriers will also install utilities at the cell tower site. Each carrier has power to run to the site as well as phone service. Each cell tower also requires access by the carriers for initial installation and ongoing maintenance.

The aforementioned parts help determine just how far a cell tower can be a from a cell phone while still able to pick up its signal. But even with all of those factors, the typical cell tower can provide service up to 45 miles away. The range of a cell tower is not a fixed figure. The most common variables include:. Cell towers are often built in areas with high population densities. This helps to avoid interference problems.

You may also lose your signal if a lot of people are attempting to use the cell tower at the same time. That often leads to calls getting dropped.

While driving, your phone can switch from one cell tower to the next mid-conversation. As you continue your journey, the cell phone will pick the strongest signal and release the weaker cell tower, making it available to another caller. Another factor that could affect your signal is a problem with the cell tower. One of the most bizarre are the Facebook posts claiming that 5G has created the coronavirus pandemic.

While definitely a little on the radical side, there are still some health concerns about 5G that are a bit more grounded in science.

Suburban tower heights typically range from feet to feet, with much taller towers, up to feet, located in rural areas. Required land size for towers ranges from a parking space to several acres. Due to co-location zoning regulations that require multiple carriers to use the same towers, ideal ground space is feet by feet, but smaller compounds — 50 feet by 50 feet or less — are used if other options are not available.

Several different types of towers exist. A lattice or self-supporting tower requires a larger area for its foundation, since there are four supporting anchors. Typically feet to feet tall, lattice towers are less expensive to construct than other types. A guyed tower is a very tall structure, usually feet to feet, utilized primarily in more rural sections of the country to maximize coverage. Supported by guy wires on three sides, this structure typically requires a lease of several acres of land from the owner.

Often the owner can retain grazing or farming rights under the guy wires, with certain restrictions. A monopole is a single pole constructed from galvanized metal sections stacked on top of each other to obtain the required height. Typically 50 feet to feet, a monopole does not have guy wires and has a sleeker look than a lattice or guyed tower.

All cabling is concealed inside the monopole. The height of the antennas affects service distance. Every feet in tower height equates to 1 mile to 1. Thus, a foot tower or rooftop reliably serves a 2-mile to 3-mile radius, depending on terrain.

The signal will travel farther but will begin to reach only hilltops. Telecommunications companies re-use frequencies, therefore tall towers placed too close together can interfere with each other. The length of the antennas can determine the amplification of the signal, the number of calls it can handle, and the direction of the signal. If a tower's height is a concern, a property owner should request the proposed tower height and indicate this in the lease to safeguard against a misunderstanding later.

But telecommunications companies cannot negotiate much on tower height, since a certain height is necessary for proper signal coverage. Suitable Cellular Sites Telecommunications companies are highly selective, choosing sites based on a property's proximity to an identified service problem area. Owners of the tallest building or highest hill may think that companies will beat a path to their doors, but this is not the case.

Often radio frequency engineers avoid sites with too much elevation, fearing that a tower's signal will interfere with the company's neighboring sites. Towers in populated areas are about five miles away from each other; however, underserved pockets, or dead zones, can be in-filled with a mini-tower or smaller antennas located on shorter structures, such as light poles. These micro cells provide coverage in about a half mile to a mile radius and are ideal for traffic corridors with dead zones in between full-size towers.

In most cases, company representatives research the service problem area, called a search ring, and identify potential sites that match the required criteria, such as zoning and elevation.

Representatives then contact property owners to determine their willingness to lease. Cooperative owners with available and favorably zoned properties located within the search ring are prime lease candidates, since telecommunications companies operate under tight time schedules. Cellular networks continually are evaluated and optimized, so a site passed over earlier may be viewed differently at a later date.

Owners who want to find out if their properties qualify should send their properties' location on a street map, site latitude and longitude coordinates, and contact information to telecommunications companies' real estate managers. Radio frequency engineers enter the site coordinates into a software program to evaluate the effectiveness of various tower locations. If the location happens to be in an area of current interest to the company, it is forwarded to the site acquisition team for further evaluation.

Proximity to Search Ring. Properties must be in or near the area identified by radio frequency engineers. Flood Plain. The combination of antenna towers and associated electronic equipment is referred to as a "cellular or PCS cell site" or "base station. Antennas are usually arranged in groups of three, with one antenna in each group used to transmit signals to mobile units, and the other two antennas used to receive signals from mobile units.

At a cell site, the total radio frequency RF power that can be transmitted from each transmitting antenna depends on the number of radio channels or transmitters that have been authorized by the Federal Communications Commission and the power of each transmitter. Although the FCC permits an effective radiated power ERP of up to watts per channel depending on the tower height , the majority of cellular or PCS cell sites in urban and suburban areas operate at an ERP of watts per channel or less.

An ERP of watts corresponds to an actual radiated power of watts, depending on the type of antenna used. In urban areas, cell sites commonly emit an ERP of 10 watts per channel or less. As with all forms of electromagnetic energy, the power density from a cellular or PCS transmitter rapidly decreases as distance from the antenna increases. Consequently, normal ground-level exposure is much less than the exposure that might be encountered if one were very close to the antenna and in its main transmitted beam.