Are there 5G towers near me? People want to know if there are 5G towers near their homes, and many want to know because they want the power and speed 5G will give them on their smartphones, but others want to know because of health concerns that 5G has raised.
There are several free online resources to find out if there are any 5G towers nearby, but these sites are unreliable, incomplete, and many are simply not showing actual towers. In addition, every cell phone service has their own websites and do not show any other company towers. I’ll show you how to find out exactly on your own.
How Can I Find Out If There Are 5G Towers Near Me?
First, you need a 5G capable smartphone to see if there is 5G service in your location. If your phone shows 5G, you’ve got it, and you can measure the speed with a sweet little smartphone app called “Speedtest”. You may still want to know more about where the towers are and how far away they are. And if you’re trying to decide whether to purchase a 5G phone, you’ll want to do some research in advance.
There are many online websites that purport to show you the location of cell phone towers and 5G towers, including sites from Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and third party sites like Ookla.com and Attennasearch.com, but these sites most often cause you more frustration than satisfaction. You would think the location of all cell phone towers and 5G towers would be public information on a single map online, but that’s just not the case.
There is a reliable way to discover 5G towers near your home, and it’s going to require some phones calls and some equipment and work at your local level. You always have to start with a specific cell phone service. You must be on AT&Ts network to get a 5G reception on your smartphone from an AT&T tower. Likewise with Verizon and Sprint.
How Can I Find Out How Close The 5G Towers Are?
The first step in discovering the location of towers in your area is to call your local cell phone service company, and I recommend calling your local office, not a national 800 number to your cell phone company. Ask them where the towers are with respect to your home, and ask them which of those nearby towers has 5G. They should be able to tell you if the towers have 5G today, and they’ll be able to tell you the exact locations of those towers. But here’s another problem you may encounter. Many of these local representatives, including the AT&T reps in my local office have no way to know if that 5G signal will cover your area around your home. Nevertheless, this is still your first step in this process.
How Fast is 5G?
The speed of 5G varies dramatically, and this chart shows how the United States is actually one of the slowest 5G countries on the globe:
You will find more infographics at Statista
In my location in Sequim, WA, I have two AT&T 5G towers on either side of me about 2 1/2 miles away from me. The 5G speeds are 75 megabytes down and 20 down, give or take, but here’s what’s interesting. The 4G speed dramatically increased and is even faster than 5G now that they upgraded the towers. Yes, that’s more than interesting. You may not need 5G to get dramatically faster service for your 4G phone, because they are giving you higher 4G speeds when they upgrade the towers to 5G. I should add that there is a tremendous amount of variability in the strength of the 5G signal in rural areas. You lose 5G constantly. They don’t tell us this.
How Can I Measure The Exact 5G Signals Hitting My Home?
You can measure the 5G signal on your own property in two ways, and I also recommend you map the 5G signal around your home, and I’ll tell you how to do that. No one will have more accurate information than you when you do this, not the cell phone service, and not your local service reps. Here’s how to map your 5G tower signal around your home.
First, use your 5G equipped smartphone to check the power of the signal at both ends of your home and in various rooms, so you will know where the signal fades and where it is strong. Again, use the speedtest app when you do this. Then do that around your house on a walk around your property doing speed tests on 5G. You may have areas on your property where it goes back and forth from 4G or LTE to 5G and back, and you are likely to see the strength of the signal represented on the bars to go up and down based on your exact position on your property.
There is a difference between super high speed 5G in the cities and what the cell phone services companies are calling 5G on their rural towers. The rural towers run at perhaps 1/10th of the speed of the high speed in the cities. Those are two different types of 5G signals. I avoided technical language in this article so it would be readable to anyone.
Second, drive in your car up and down the main streets around your area (stopping to do the test) and test the speed of your smartphone connection using the speedtest app. There are many apps that test your speed, so you can use whichever one your prefer, and most of them are free. Some of us like to observe where we do and do not have 5G on our smartphones as we drive around the county or the city, so you can do this kind of test periodically in your town or country.
Remember, no one will do such a detailed and accurate test as you will with your own smarphone, and you’re the only one who will ultimately be able to accurately answer the question, “Are there 5G towers near me?”
Last Updated on January 7, 2021 by Chuck Marunde
