did your mobile data became super slow (almost useless) during the freeze or during blackout?

[WRM20]

Originally Posted by KerrTown

Here in Cinco, there are very few (practically no) cell towers for each carrier due to the land planning by the developer. Most people here get by with Wi-Fi Calling and the booster microcells on the major road right-of-way.

When I had power, the Xfinity internet was the only link to the outside world, thanks to Wi-Fi Calling. It was obvious that the microcells and the few cell towers were out-of-power when my home Wi-Fi was working flawlessly. (Keep in mind that most of Houston had at least a stretch of no power for 24-48 hours straight during the 4-day event.).

If the water was turning yellow/brown due to power outages, then its expected that the cell towers will go down too by design (battery backup is only designed for a few hours, not days-on-end). Your cell phone will use up the battery to amplify the weak signal of a far-away tower to its maximum, which does impact battery life! Can any of the few left with Consolidated's landline telephone service tell us about the quality-of-service during the winter storm?

My Mom lives East of Mason Road in Memorial Parkway, and her landline worked just fine. She has a phone that will work when the power is out.

[gwarnecke]

I live in the Energy Corridor and our T-Mobile phones were basically useless during the Wednesday of the freeze week that both halves of our neighborhood lost power. Our Xfinity internet was down too (our grid power was out, but we were running a generator). I heard from neighbors with AT&T fiber that battery backup kept the fiber network up and running.

My ham radio kept working during the ice storm, was grateful to have it in case we had needed to call for help.

[Need4Camaro]

It's also possible that your local tower went down during the blackouts and you were using a tower much further away which means less SINR. Mine did on several accounts and I lost data completely during those cold dark lonely periods.