A Comparison of Node/Cell Density in my Area

See my video on this article as well

I wanted to show some visual data that emphasizes the fact that T-Mobile has a higher node/cell density in my area.  I know this is true in a lot of other areas as well. I believe this helps in regards to minimizing congestion on the radio-access-network (RAN), helps with coverage, and makes the RSRQ/quality consistently lower.  T-Mobile just needs the core/backhaul to support it.

When I do my monthly reporting, T-Mobile is averaging around -10 for RSRQ. AT&T is usually second, and Verizon is last (around -13).  In my opinion, there appears to be a strong correlation in RSRQ/quality and tower density.  The more tower density(and cells/bands), the better quality of signal.

For the last week (or so), I am showing some of my travels in my area.  Here is where I travelled.

Let's look at the number of nodes/cells for each carrier.  The node usually corresponds to a tower-site and there are multiple cells per tower-site.  This is just random traveling.  Depending on where I am traveling, I won't see every cell on every tower/node.  Just see how much higher T-Mobile is in Node/Cell density in this area.

Verizon

18 Nodes
70 Unique Cells

AT&T

20 Nodes
79 Unique Cells

T-Mobile

38 Nodes (40 if we count some of the Sprint sites that are now showing up)
100 Unique Cells

T-Mobile has 100 unique cells, AT&T has 79 unique cells, and Verizon has 70 cells.  This seems to line-up with the average RSRQ readings I typically see.  

For this subset of data, I want to show the network quality readings and how this appears on a map.  This totals 4G and 5G.

Verizon Bad Quality (233 Bad Plots)

AT&T Bad Quality (55 Bad Plots)

T-Mobile Bad Quality (52 Bad Plots)

As I mentioned earlier, AT&T and T-Mobile are very close on maintaining good signal quality/RSRQ.  I don't have a report on the number of total cells/bands per site in this area but I think AT&T may have more than Verizon (in this area).  That would be a good report to do on Cellmapper.  A quick look at the info seems to confirm.

AT&T seems to have an average of 4-5 bands per tower.  Verizon is around 3-4.  T-Mobile is a 2-3 on LTE and maybe bands 71 and 41 for 5G.

I think the reason AT&T is so close to T-Mobile is due to the density of cells on each node/tower as compared to Verizon.

What do you think?