Cell and Internet experts, why does this happen?

[Meowth LVL255]

I have Metro PCS and Spectrum internet. The Metro is the unlimited plan 4g lte and the spectrum is half gig down. Usually I only use my house internet wifi on my phone at those rare moments when my lte is struggling, but it'll still do the job. Usually, my metro phone is pushing 40-60mbps. So a few months ago, my house WiFi decided to go out because some drunk moron hit something. Once that happened, I said I'll just use my mobile internet to continue what I was doing. I would have, but it seemed that my mobile internet went out with my house internet. I couldn't get a connection or even call out. I made sure my phone wasn't connected to WiFi so I wasn't creating the issue myself. I speed tested the connection and it was giving me .02 connection speed when it would connect. When I left the house, my metro connection would come back to full, when I went back home, it would do that again. I'm a tech myself so I know these connections should have nothing to do with each other, but seeing it for myself, I'm questioning reality now. This morning, the house internet went out again and all of a sudden, I'm sitting there using my phone and notice. I disconnected my WiFi and there it happens again. Worst internet speeds I've ever seen. Tonight, my WiFi is still out and I still have a shitty connection with my phone. The other people in my house seen to be facing similar problems. They have Verizon getting 0.5mbps. Why does this happen and how would I fix it? It's becoming a problem because I work at night when everyone's asleep (I record audio) and I need to be able to upload my work. Any insight as to why this happens and hopefully a fix would be appreciated.

[Pandur]

Some idiot nearby using a signal jammer? Or a broken device in the building that emits strong enough wireless noise to block out other communication (basically an accidental jammer)

 

If you and/or your neighbor use any device over ethernet instead of wifi, does that have a solid internet connection when this happens?

[brwainer]

If you live in a moderately dense apartment building or similar, there is probably a local cell tower on or in your building, that is connected via fiber probably to spectrum. Or even if its a separate company connecting the cell tower, the fibers go through the same path that the drunk person hits. The cell tower should stop broadcasting when it is offline, but it might not.

[Donut417]

15 hours ago, Selestialnorre said:

I have Metro PCS and Spectrum internet.

Metro PCS is part of T Mobile. I know that we had a new cell tower installed few years ago Im pretty sure was T Mobile. One interesting thing I noticed was that the tower was fed by a Charter Spectrum Fiber line. Was interesting because Charter doesn't provide service to our community, at least at the time time didn't. They only cover like 8% of the community now. Its quite possible that Charter supplied Fiber backhaul to the cell site you normally connect to. 

 

As @brwainerstated, there is a good possibility that if you live in an Apartment that they could have cell sites just outside or inside the building. I know that they did this with the Terminals at Detroit Metro Airport, this way they had good coverage there. They also have sites just outside the airport to cover the surrounding community. So when the drunk idiot took out the other lines they could have damaged the line connecting the cell site. 

[Meowth LVL255]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Metro PCS is part of T Mobile. I know that we had a new cell tower installed few years ago Im pretty sure was T Mobile. One interesting thing I noticed was that the tower was fed by a Charter Spectrum Fiber line. Was interesting because Charter doesn't provide service to our community, at least at the time time didn't. They only cover like 8% of the community now. Its quite possible that Charter supplied Fiber backhaul to the cell site you normally connect to. 

 

As @brwainerstated, there is a good possibility that if you live in an Apartment that they could have cell sites just outside or inside the building. I know that they did this with the Terminals at Detroit Metro Airport, this way they had good coverage there. They also have sites just outside the airport to cover the surrounding community. So when the drunk idiot took out the other lines they could have damaged the line connecting the cell site. 

Way better answers than I got from Reddit. I appreciate all of them for not being combative lol and ready to fight. So I called spectrum this morning when I was out of the house and was able to actually get my phone to do anything at all. They said it was a fiber cut that had the internet down and my reason stays as is, some drunk moron hit a line because.. you know, Florida man. So now that service has been restored and I'm still not using WiFi on my phone but cell data only, I am not experiencing a basically useless phone anymore. With that said, I did talk to a friend who plays fiber optic cable play night while I was out. He said the same thing another reply here had said. Spectrum and metro could be using the same lines, but I'd never heard of a cell tower that ran on fiber. I don't know much about what runs in that or not, I usually repair computers and work with audio, but I have some knowledge all in all around tech. I live in a house with several other people and they were all having the same issue even with Verizon. Also, to answer Pandur. The house internet was completely out due to a fiber cut. Nothing was connected. There are mostly all clean connections in the house when it isn't down and nobody has issues. I'm thinking what brwainer said was true though. The cell tower is probably running through the same lines and it was supposed to do broadcasting but doesn't.

[redanalog]

Do we know what the drunk idiot hit?

[Lurick]

48 minutes ago, Selestialnorre said:

Way better answers than I got from Reddit. I appreciate all of them for not being combative lol and ready to fight. So I called spectrum this morning when I was out of the house and was able to actually get my phone to do anything at all. They said it was a fiber cut that had the internet down and my reason stays as is, some drunk moron hit a line because.. you know, Florida man. So now that service has been restored and I'm still not using WiFi on my phone but cell data only, I am not experiencing a basically useless phone anymore. With that said, I did talk to a friend who plays fiber optic cable play night while I was out. He said the same thing another reply here had said. Spectrum and metro could be using the same lines, but I'd never heard of a cell tower that ran on fiber. I don't know much about what runs in that or not, I usually repair computers and work with audio, but I have some knowledge all in all around tech. I live in a house with several other people and they were all having the same issue even with Verizon. Also, to answer Pandur. The house internet was completely out due to a fiber cut. Nothing was connected. There are mostly all clean connections in the house when it isn't down and nobody has issues. I'm thinking what brwainer said was true though. The cell tower is probably running through the same lines and it was supposed to do broadcasting but doesn't.

Wait, if not fiber how do you think they transfer upwards of 100+ Gbps of data from all the people hitting the tower? Genuinely curious because I've seen others ask similar questions on other places as well so I always want to know what people think happens as a general curiosity is all.

 

The reason is that fiber can do hundreds of terabits or much more per second in theory while also going over long distances at the same time (think 100s of kilometers*). Those lines of course aren't doing that much all the time but with other technologies in the mix (DWDM for example) each wavelength on a single fiber bundle can do 400+ Gbps across 200+ wavelengths (think tons of incoming 1Gb, 10Gb, 100Gb+ ports funneled into a single fiber using various wavelengths) providing TONS of data across a each fiber allowing much more throughput as well without needing to dig and bury more cable or run multiple bundles of cables, just swap out some optics and equipment on each side and you've increased capacity of that line. This is then usually broken out further downstream to go from those multiple colors (wavelengths) on a fiber to get down to the homes so it's kind of like fanning out with a ton of speed across vast distances to nodes that break it down further and further to homes or businesses at various speeds and service levels.

Although upstream they usually have many fibers in a bundle and multiple bundles for different providers there are places where it will come down to a single fiber run or two to the end (such as a cell tower or your home/business for example) so if that gets cut or knocked out if running above ground, etc. then it will of course bring down anything connected to it causing issues for those trying to use that tower, so if a node that provides fiber to multiple cell towers gets taken out then, as you saw, multiple providers can be impacted too. Sometimes (I think) towers can be shared among companies so if that was the case and there was fiber running above ground and someone hit a pole carrying that then boom, no service.

 

tl;dr: Fiber + DWDM or other mux technologies = much more throughput than anything else on a single medium. Idiot in car probably hit a distribution line or something going into a node that feeds multiple towers or there was a shared tower without a backup link elsewhere coming in (or they hit close enough to the tower to take down all the links coming in)

 

*When you bring powered repeaters and whatnot into the mix then you're able to cross much further distances (oceans).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing

[Meowth LVL255]

41 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Wait, if not fiber how do you think they transfer upwards of 100+ Gbps of data from all the people hitting the tower? Genuinely curious because I've seen others ask similar questions on other places as well so I always want to know what people think happens as a general curiosity is all.

 

The reason is that fiber can do hundreds of terabits or much more per second in theory while also going over long distances at the same time (think 100s of kilometers*). Those lines of course aren't doing that much all the time but with other technologies in the mix (DWDM for example) each wavelength on a single fiber bundle can do 400+ Gbps across 200+ wavelengths (think tons of incoming 1Gb, 10Gb, 100Gb+ ports funneled into a single fiber using various wavelengths) providing TONS of data across a each fiber allowing much more throughput as well without needing to dig and bury more cable or run multiple bundles of cables, just swap out some optics and equipment on each side and you've increased capacity of that line. This is then usually broken out further downstream to go from those multiple colors (wavelengths) on a fiber to get down to the homes so it's kind of like fanning out with a ton of speed across vast distances to nodes that break it down further and further to homes or businesses at various speeds and service levels.

Although upstream they usually have many fibers in a bundle and multiple bundles for different providers there are places where it will come down to a single fiber run or two to the end (such as a cell tower or your home/business for example) so if that gets cut or knocked out if running above ground, etc. then it will of course bring down anything connected to it causing issues for those trying to use that tower, so if a node that provides fiber to multiple cell towers gets taken out then, as you saw, multiple providers can be impacted too. Sometimes (I think) towers can be shared among companies so if that was the case and there was fiber running above ground and someone hit a pole carrying that then boom, no service.

 

tl;dr: Fiber + DWDM or other mux technologies = much more throughput than anything else on a single medium. Idiot in car probably hit a distribution line or something going into a node that feeds multiple towers or there was a shared tower without a backup link elsewhere coming in (or they hit close enough to the tower to take down all the links coming in)

 

*When you bring powered repeaters and whatnot into the mix then you're able to cross much further distances (oceans).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing

Great answer for this. I genuinely don't know anything about towers or fiber optic lines. I've never studied into the company side of incoming internet, but I figured we had phone lines bringing us kilobits, and then later on, satellite bringing us 1-5mbps, and cable bringing us more than 20. I thought fiber was the next step up with 1gb+ as my modem literally has a screw-on cable on the back giving it life. I've always heard that spectrum called it cable internet until yesterday when I called while I was out of the house, but then they said a fiber optic line cut had happened (some drunk moron cut a line) while Verizon was so happily calling their internet fiber(FiOS) for years. Legit, I thought spectrum was still on cable.

[Meowth LVL255]

58 minutes ago, redanalog said:

Do we know what the drunk idiot hit?

Well here's the thing, Florida man rules dictate that our construction workers (and just most of us in general) here are drunk idiots. Ask the news and most all social media lol. Funny enough, I have a close friend who works in laying fiber optic cable and has been for about 3 years now. Every week, there's a fiber cut that he's called to go and fix with a large crew. Most of them are career drunks. Side note, he told me he witnessed 2 of them that caught a glimpse of some yoga pants walking down the street (at that distance, that's all they could make out) and and felt the need to make donkey noises followed by jumping in the company vehicle to follow the poor girl around the block to hehaw at her. The two of them are huge drunks. I'm willing to bet that whoever keeps cutting fiber optic cables is like those two given the extraordinarily bad reputation.

[Donut417]

11 minutes ago, Selestialnorre said:

iber(FiOS)

FIOS is fiber to the home. The reason why some FIOS installs are done with Coax is so they can deliver TV service to your home. Verizon doesnt use cable modems, the router they use is called a Moca router. The internet is delivered at 1 Ghz to 1.5Ghz on the line while TV is delivered on the lower bands. Generally if you have slower connections Verizon will use the coax install. With some of the faster speed tiers they will install Ethernet. Essentially you have Fiber running to an ONT (Media Converter) that changes it to copper. The ONT is kinda like a modem but not really a modem. The ONT will convert the Fiber to either Ethernet or Coax, at least on Verizon FIOS. With AT&T they use a gateway device thats basically the media converter and router built in to one box. Everyone does Fiber differently. 

 

Companies like Charter do have Fiber in their network and some cable providers will even run Fiber to the home and use tech called RFoG (RF over Glass) to run internet. Basically the Fiber runs into a micro node that converts the Light to RF singles that the cable modem can understand. Normal coax internet will have a Node out in the neighborhood somewhere and a whole load of customers will be connected to it. Thats why Cable internet is called Fiber to the node. Essentially Fiber just runs from the central office in the area to the node and is converted to coax that carries an RF signal. Cable networks are referred to HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax networks). 

[Meowth LVL255]

15 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

FIOS is fiber to the home. The reason why some FIOS installs are done with Coax is so they can deliver TV service to your home. Verizon doesnt use cable modems, the router they use is called a Moca router. The internet is delivered at 1 Ghz to 1.5Ghz on the line while TV is delivered on the lower bands. Generally if you have slower connections Verizon will use the coax install. With some of the faster speed tiers they will install Ethernet. Essentially you have Fiber running to an ONT (Media Converter) that changes it to copper. The ONT is kinda like a modem but not really a modem. The ONT will convert the Fiber to either Ethernet or Coax, at least on Verizon FIOS. With AT&T they use a gateway device thats basically the media converter and router built in to one box. Everyone does Fiber differently. 

 

Companies like Charter do have Fiber in their network and some cable providers will even run Fiber to the home and use tech called RFoG (RF over Glass) to run internet. Basically the Fiber runs into a micro node that converts the Light to RF singles that the cable modem can understand. Normal coax internet will have a Node out in the neighborhood somewhere and a whole load of customers will be connected to it. Thats why Cable internet is called Fiber to the node. Essentially Fiber just runs from the central office in the area to the node and is converted to coax that carries an RF signal. Cable networks are referred to HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax networks). 

Lol I know way less than I thought about internet delivery, although, in not claiming to be an expert. I really appreciate your explanation. So would fiber be able to run signal to cell towers off the same small city internet fiber?

[Donut417]

Just now, Selestialnorre said:

o would fiber be able to run signal to cell towers off the same small city internet fiber?

That fiber line that got hit probably had multiple fibers in them. Most ISP's dont just run one Fiber line, many times its a bundle. Because dedicated Fiber lines are a cash cow for ISP's offing bushiness internet. 

[Meowth LVL255]

10 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

That fiber line that got hit probably had multiple fibers in them. Most ISP's dont just run one Fiber line, many times its a bundle. Because dedicated Fiber lines are a cash cow for ISP's offing bushiness internet. 

Well, that's it then. My cell tower and my internet are on the same fiber cable. That's the answer I'm going with and I appreciate all of you who commented.

[Lurick]

12 hours ago, Selestialnorre said:

Great answer for this. I genuinely don't know anything about towers or fiber optic lines. I've never studied into the company side of incoming internet, but I figured we had phone lines bringing us kilobits, and then later on, satellite bringing us 1-5mbps, and cable bringing us more than 20. I thought fiber was the next step up with 1gb+ as my modem literally has a screw-on cable on the back giving it life. I've always heard that spectrum called it cable internet until yesterday when I called while I was out of the house, but then they said a fiber optic line cut had happened (some drunk moron cut a line) while Verizon was so happily calling their internet fiber(FiOS) for years. Legit, I thought spectrum was still on cable.

Yah, they'll do cable to the homes and some small businesses but it's all fiber on the backend

[brwainer]

13 hours ago, Selestialnorre said:

Well, that's it then. My cell tower and my internet are on the same fiber cable. That's the answer I'm going with and I appreciate all of you who commented.

They’re probably not the same fiber cable, but they are probably in the same bundle. Fiber main lines are often 96 fibers (48 pairs), these then go off into buildings or a small area as usually 6 pairs or 12 pairs. Each fiber pair can be leased to a different customer. So Spectrum may have run the fiber bundle to your building that everyone is leasing, one pair is being used for the cable internet service while another pair is being leased by T-Mobile. Usually when there is fiber damage, the whole bundle needs to be re-spliced. Even most of the bundle survived, they may need to cut it and put in extensions to complete the full repair. A 96-fiber repair takes 4-8 hours, *after* the highly trained crew makes it to the site and clears sufficient access to the bundle. Ask your friend whether drivers or backhoes cause more issues for him - most of the outages that affect the company I work for are caused by backhoes or other construction equipment. Especially when they skip paying (or waiting) for a buried cable and pipe survey.

 

For true “cell towers” they often have fiber (as mentioned by others, there is a difference between an enterprise dedicated fiber connection, and what is deployed by FiOS and other fiber-to-the-home) as a main connection, and microwave point-to-point connections to other nearby towers as a backup. If the tower is in a place that’s expensive to reach, it might only have microwave connections. On a cell tower, you can spot the microwave connections by looking for a kick drum.

 

In your building (you didn’t really confirm or deny whether you live in an apartment building, I’m going to assume you do), you probably don’t have a “cell tower”, and your building definitely doesn’t have any backup connections, at least for T-Mobile. Many buildings have “micro nodes” or DAS “distributed antenna system” which means that an indoor version of the antennas on a cell tower are placed on every floor or every other floor. The antennas connect using coaxial cable (same material as the “coax cable” for a cable internet or TV service, but different signals put onto it) to a headend device, which can take fiber or ethernet connections. The headend device is usually in the same equipment room as the main cable tv/internet splitter/amplifier/etc.

 

In my company’s HQ, we have a DAS for AT&T which is using fiber from Cox (a “cable” company), and a DAS for Verizon Wireless which is using fiber from Verizon (the “phone” company, which is legally separate from Verizon Wireless). Neither DAS has a backup connection. The company also independently purchases dedicated fiber services from Verizon and Lumen, as well as cable modem internet and phone services from Cox. Although Cox fiber comes into our building, the “cable headend” that is converting from fiber to coax is located outside in a pedestal, because it services the whole block. My HQ is more complicated than any apartment complex, but the way the DAS’ are connected is relevant.

[Meowth LVL255]

16 hours ago, brwainer said:

They’re probably not the same fiber cable, but they are probably in the same bundle. Fiber main lines are often 96 fibers (48 pairs), these then go off into buildings or a small area as usually 6 pairs or 12 pairs. Each fiber pair can be leased to a different customer. So Spectrum may have run the fiber bundle to your building that everyone is leasing, one pair is being used for the cable internet service while another pair is being leased by T-Mobile. Usually when there is fiber damage, the whole bundle needs to be re-spliced. Even most of the bundle survived, they may need to cut it and put in extensions to complete the full repair. A 96-fiber repair takes 4-8 hours, *after* the highly trained crew makes it to the site and clears sufficient access to the bundle. Ask your friend whether drivers or backhoes cause more issues for him - most of the outages that affect the company I work for are caused by backhoes or other construction equipment. Especially when they skip paying (or waiting) for a buried cable and pipe survey.

 

For true “cell towers” they often have fiber (as mentioned by others, there is a difference between an enterprise dedicated fiber connection, and what is deployed by FiOS and other fiber-to-the-home) as a main connection, and microwave point-to-point connections to other nearby towers as a backup. If the tower is in a place that’s expensive to reach, it might only have microwave connections. On a cell tower, you can spot the microwave connections by looking for a kick drum.

 

In your building (you didn’t really confirm or deny whether you live in an apartment building, I’m going to assume you do), you probably don’t have a “cell tower”, and your building definitely doesn’t have any backup connections, at least for T-Mobile. Many buildings have “micro nodes” or DAS “distributed antenna system” which means that an indoor version of the antennas on a cell tower are placed on every floor or every other floor. The antennas connect using coaxial cable (same material as the “coax cable” for a cable internet or TV service, but different signals put onto it) to a headend device, which can take fiber or ethernet connections. The headend device is usually in the same equipment room as the main cable tv/internet splitter/amplifier/etc.

 

In my company’s HQ, we have a DAS for AT&T which is using fiber from Cox (a “cable” company), and a DAS for Verizon Wireless which is using fiber from Verizon (the “phone” company, which is legally separate from Verizon Wireless). Neither DAS has a backup connection. The company also independently purchases dedicated fiber services from Verizon and Lumen, as well as cable modem internet and phone services from Cox. Although Cox fiber comes into our building, the “cable headend” that is converting from fiber to coax is located outside in a pedestal, because it services the whole block. My HQ is more complicated than any apartment complex, but the way the DAS’ are connected is relevant.

Sorry, I'll clarify that now. I live in a dedicated house with roommates. We have the 100-dollar half GB down plan for spectrum running through a single modem/router combo with 2 routers for each end of the house. We have what I assume to be our T-Mobile cell tower about 3 miles down the road from the house. (See image) I'd give you a city to look at it further, but internet and all. As for the driver or backhoe thing, I'll have to ask him over the weekend. I have asked him who keeps cutting these fibers and he says he has no clue. He's just called in to fix them when they happen. He basically gets no info and is just told where and when.

[brwainer]

Ah, in that case the tower really should have backups. This could also be one of those ways that they save money for Metro PCS - the backups might not be fast enough for Tmobile users plus all the secondary customers.

 

If the fiber is mostly aerial, then is probably damaged by drunk drivers or falling trees most of the time. If the fiber is buried then the most likely damage is when people are digging, except for when a driver hits a pedestal.

[Meowth LVL255]

45 minutes ago, brwainer said:

Ah, in that case the tower really should have backups. This could also be one of those ways that they save money for Metro PCS - the backups might not be fast enough for Tmobile users plus all the secondary customers.

 

If the fiber is mostly aerial, then is probably damaged by drunk drivers or falling trees most of the time. If the fiber is buried then the most likely damage is when people are digging, except for when a driver hits a pedestal.

When I called, Spectrum's automated call line told me there'd been a fiber cut. That's all the info that I have on that. I just assumed from the previous occurrences that it was a drunk driver again which I'd been told was before. As for the lines being in the air, I don't have a clue. I assume also that since the city I live in still has telephone poles and a large amount of wires each that they were carrying the fiber. But as I was saying in the original post, now that I have a chance to upload the actual results. here's the difference between when the house internet is out and when it's working properly. Both screenshots were taken when the phone was not connected to wifi and running on its own service. People usually accuse me of "Being on wifi and not noticing." 

[brwainer]

18 hours ago, Selestialnorre said:

When I called, Spectrum's automated call line told me there'd been a fiber cut. That's all the info that I have on that. I just assumed from the previous occurrences that it was a drunk driver again which I'd been told was before. As for the lines being in the air, I don't have a clue. I assume also that since the city I live in still has telephone poles and a large amount of wires each that they were carrying the fiber. But as I was saying in the original post, now that I have a chance to upload the actual results. here's the difference between when the house internet is out and when it's working properly. Both screenshots were taken when the phone was not connected to wifi and running on its own service. People usually accuse me of "Being on wifi and not noticing." 

Hard to accuse you of being on wifi and not noticing when the speedtest.net app shows LTE and MetroPCS right on the screen!

 

Nothing else to add or discuss related to this topic I think.