How many simultaneous connections can a Cell site tower handle?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited March 2014
You know the 3g gsm/umts cell site towers that provide cellphone coverage, well how many simultaneous connections can they handle?

My wireless carrier said that sometimes dropped calls are caused by the cell site tower overloading because too many people are using it and they also said the more data that cellphone apps use, the less the cell site tower can handle.



So how many simultaneous calls can a 3g cell site tower handle? 100? 1000? 10000?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    bbwibbwi Posts: 812member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by danielspencer2 View Post


    So how many simultaneous calls can a 3g cell site tower handle? 100? 1000? 10000?



    I doubt there is a limit to the number of connections to the tower but rather the total amount of traffic passing through the tower. You could have 1 person eating up all the bandwidth or 10,000 people all eating just a chunk of bandwidth
  • Reply 2 of 7
    I'm not sure if there's a hard limit, but every call added decreases the signal-to-noise ratio for every other call. And that's affected by all sorts of other things.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    2G GSM does actually have a max limit of simultaneous users for voice traffic. After this limit is reached, no more calls go through.



    The 3G technologies are all CDMA-based, and they have a more gaussian-style call-quality drop off when too many users get on the same channel.



    I have no idea what the actual numbers are for either tech, but CDMA is well known to support a lot more simultaneous users than the TDMA technique used in GSM.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by danielspencer2 View Post


    You know the 3g gsm/umts cell site towers that provide cellphone coverage, well how many simultaneous connections can they handle?

    My wireless carrier said that sometimes dropped calls are caused by the cell site tower overloading because too many people are using it and they also said the more data that cellphone apps use, the less the cell site tower can handle.



    So how many simultaneous calls can a 3g cell site tower handle? 100? 1000? 10000?



    I would also like to know the amount of traffic a cell tower of current technology (3G/AT&T) can carry. I worked for AT&T Wireless when TDMA was still in the picture, and GSM was being rolled out. Our trainers and tech support had taught us there were approximately 412 channels, and each channel could support 3 calls via TDMA. With respect to Digital Control Channels (DCCH) and other infrastructure support lessening the literal 412 x 3, we came to figure each tower could hold 1200 conversations. Circa 2002



    We were advised in comparison/contrast CDMA supported approximately 6 calls per channel. The control channel, aforementioned, is the pipe which SMS/text travels through, if it's still done the same way. Now, I'm an iPhone addict: mostly data, using Yahoo news and Facebook.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Splinemodel View Post


    2G GSM does actually have a max limit of simultaneous users for voice traffic. After this limit is reached, no more calls go through.



    The 3G technologies are all CDMA-based, and they have a more gaussian-style call-quality drop off when too many users get on the same channel.



    I have no idea what the actual numbers are for either tech, but CDMA is well known to support a lot more simultaneous users than the TDMA technique used in GSM.



    Wow, had no idea about this. Thanks, now I'm about to spend 2 hours browsing Wikipedia.
  • Reply 6 of 7
    Dear Friend,
    I would like to know a Optical Fibre Core Cable which has 100 single fibre cables, can handle how much GSM Call?
  • Reply 7 of 7

      

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Awsfloozy View Post





    I would also like to know the amount of traffic a cell tower of current technology (3G/AT&T) can carry. I worked for AT&T Wireless when TDMA was still in the picture, and GSM was being rolled out. Our trainers and tech support had taught us there were approximately 412 channels, and each channel could support 3 calls via TDMA. With respect to Digital Control Channels (DCCH) and other infrastructure support lessening the literal 412 x 3, we came to figure each tower could hold 1200 conversations. Circa 2002



    We were advised in comparison/contrast CDMA supported approximately 6 calls per channel. The control channel, aforementioned, is the pipe which SMS/text travels through, if it's still done the same way. Now, I'm an iPhone addict: mostly data, using Yahoo news and Facebook.



     Dear Friend,

    I would like to know a Optical Fibre Core Cable which has 100 of single fibre cable, can handle for how much GSM Call?

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