Verizon Tower broadcasting state of "Deactivated" for B66 / B2 ... could N77 be on the way?
There's a tower near me here in Northern Virginia that has B2, B13, B66.
Within iPhone 14 Pro's FTM, it shows Band 66 and Band 2 as having a state of Deactivated.
There's another tower nearby that is broadcasting B5. Oddly I'm picking up B48 (but it's not on the cellmapper.net site anywhere).
Is there a possibility that we're going to see N77 light up connected to the B48 and see B2/B66 be decommissioned with B13 continuing on?
Posted Aug 17, 2023, 2:23 PM UTC
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B48 doesn’t show up on cellmapper as its SCC only. Verizon won’t allow users to connect to it as the primary band so it cannot be mapped.
Good info. Doing a little searching around I see mentions of B48 / N77, but I surmise that’s more CBRS being a conduit associated with N77?
Its associated with upgraded sites; the older sites didn't use CBRS at all.
Newer upgraded sites have added 5G baseband, and an n77 radio in addition to a CBRS radio with either 4 cables to a large (multiband) antenna, or in other scenarios the CBRS radios also have integrated internal antennas. Depends on the footprint needed to be covered.
But its all part of the upgrade process. Circa 2013 LTE-only sites won't have any of those things, as extra baseband processing is required for more channels, and CBRS would have been not worth it before upgrading everything else.
Oddly enough, I'm beginning to see 5G UW available around the tower that has CBRS... now I have to wonder when the other towers around here will be upgraded with similar gear...
I'm definitely chuckling looking at the Verizon map for 5G UW that is a large swath but the towers don't seem to share the same view point.