Do you actually have any hard data on this Paul? Not that I dont believe
you, just would like to know how many dB we are talking about. "sucked"
doesnt translate very well...

I was surprised when I visited the US for the first time how much higher
the cell towers were compared to Australia's. From what I understand
though cell use in Australia (per unit pop) topped the world for a while
and it was undesirable to have high towers because the larger cell size
meant co-cell interference was more likely. Towers and antennas then
ended up on shorter towers and building sides to allow for the higher
density of users.

Towers in rural areas were of course a lot higher but they had an upper
limit when you factored in the 32km limit for GSM systems. It was often
frustrating when travelling in thee areas to see 3-4 cells sites in
strong signal range but unable to make/receive calls because of that max
distance restriction.

Cheers Bob W5/VK2YQA

Paul Johnson wrote:

A couple hundred feet is taller than most (all?) cell towers. Nextel used
to boast about having the tallest towers, around 110 feet max. Sprint's
towers were the shortest before Nextel bought them at around 60 feet. This
is why Sprint's signal really sucked balls before Nextel bought them out.