Reply To: Stronger cell antenna?

@aufdenkampe, I’m sure that the Tagolas did better when it was new.  You can’t really tell in my picture, but all of my bigger antennas are sort-of crumpled from being dragged back and forth in my backpack and getting shuffled around on my desk.

I would guess Sodaq’s decision to change antennas probably had more to do with suppliers and costs than anything else.

Most cellular antennas are very wide band or ultra wide band – they cover a lot of frequencies.   And the major cell phone companies all use multiple LTE bands and frequencies.  The last remaining GSM (2G) from T-Mobile’s is on band 2 at 1900 MHz: https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/t-mobile-network, but globally GSM *could* be various bands anywhere from 350-1900 MHz.  AT&T’s used to be on bands 2 (1900MHz) and 5 (850MHz) [https://www.frequencycheck.com/carriers/at-t-united-states] and I think those are the two most commonly used GSM bands globally [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands].  LTE can be on an even wider range of bands/frequencies – but if an antenna was already covering a wide enough range to get the main GSM bands, it can catch a lot of the LTE bands as well.  T-Mobile’s main LTE band is the same band 2 that it uses for GSM.  Verizon and AT&T’s “favorite” bands are 12 & 13, which are both 700MHz [https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/cell-phone-networks-and-frequencies-explained] – but they both also use bands 2 and 5 for LTE.  Even if you had an antenna focused at only the 1900 GSM band, which I think is unlikely, it might do fine for LTE.  I think 2G disappeared so they could use the same band space for LTE.